Here is a combination I never thought I’d see together: a 1959 Lincoln Continental, hybrid technology and rock musician Neil Young.
But it’s happening. Undercover.com reports that the Lincvolt is a new project by Young’s Shakey Pictures.
Together, they are transforming the engine of a 1959 Lincoln Continental Mk IV convertible into a new series hybrid system. […]
“Neil’s whole thing is big people and a big country need a big car”, L.A. Johnson told Undercover during his recent visit to Adelaide. “If we can get a car to do 100mpg what is the difference? Why have a little car that weighs nothing that you can hardly get into? It is not about size, it is about efficiency,”
“Some of the experimenting we are doing is building this engine that is going to have a turbine on it,” he said. “It is going to generate the power to generate the battery, but there is a guy in Adelaide who has found a way to eliminate batteries which is a whole other thing”.
Once they finish in the shop, “the plan is to drive the car to Detroit where the car was made originally,” he says. “We are going to take the car back to the empty shutdown plant where it was born. The car goes back to its homeland, then it goes back to Wichita and then Neil and I will drive it on the same road we drove it from San Francisco to Wichita back on Route 66.”
The Lincvolt Web site is here. Here’s a live Webcam in Lincvolt’s garage in Wichita, Kan.
Here’s a video with Young and two of the developers. It sounds like the Lincoln will be running on a combination of compressed natural gas, ethanol and a third fuel source that will be revealed later. It also contains an electric turbine.
I read a biography of Young a few years ago, and he’s serious in his love of Route 66, the environment and classic cars. (He has a full-time classic-car restorer on his staff.) So this seems to be a natural outlet for him.