If you’re in as many car-themed group chats as I am, you probably remember when a General Motors EV1—the company’s 1990s electric car that it famously leased to owners before crushing nearly every example—randomly popped up for sale at a tow pound lot in Atlanta, Georgia back in October, before being sold to a private owner. This was notable because this was the only EV1 ever to be legally sold to the public; all of the others that survived are still technically owned by GM and leased out to museums and universities.
The tale behind how this particular EV1 survived the crusher and was eventually acquired by its current owner is pretty wild. A week after the tow pound auction took place, I spoke to the car’s original lessee back in the ’90s, as well as the car’s newest steward, who dropped over six figures to have the chance at bringing this car back to its former glory. That story is definitely worth a read if you have the time.
Historically, GM has been militant about keeping EV1s out of private hands. The few that weren’t crushed are either well-documented museum pieces or sitting in the company’s own collection. When an EV1 was discovered abandoned in an Atlanta parking garage, GM was rumored to have stepped in and repossessed it so it wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands.
Many people, including Billy, the new owner who refused to give out his full name in fear of retaliation from GM, expected the company to step in and take some sort of legal action to get the car back. But that’s not happening this time around. In fact, for VIN #212, it sounds like GM is giving full support to Billy and the group of people attempting to restore this EV1 to its former glory.
GM Welcomes The New Owner With Open Arms
When it comes to the sale of rare cars, it’s pretty common for the general public to be in the dark. A lot of high-end, desirable collector cars trade hands behind closed doors, where wealthy collectors make back-room deals and ship cars to their new owners without anyone ever knowing.
The sale of this EV1 was different, clearly. The tow pound told me over the phone back in October that the car was marked as abandoned by the Clark Atlanta University Public Safety agency—the school’s on-site police force—and removed from the premises. The tow pound, A-Tow Atlanta, listed the car for sale publicly, and didn’t know how important it was (it was listed on its auction website as a “GMC ELECTRIC VEHICLE”).
It didn’t take long for the internet to discover that there was an actual EV1 for sale to the public, setting off a flurry of coverage across the blogosphere, including a post by me the day it was sold. There was no hiding that this car existed, and no hiding that someone had paid $118,000 for it.
Obviously, GM knew as well. But instead of filing a lawsuit or sneaking into Billy’s restoration shop in the dead of night to take the EV1 back, the company is taking the opposite approach. In a video published today by Jared Pink of The Questionable Garage YouTube channel, it’s revealed that GM actually invited the restoration team to its headquarters to get a tour of its Heritage Collection, including close-up looks at two fully functioning EV1s.
While that’s all very cool, the most important part comes at the end, when the video teases a walk around GM’s modern battery facilities and what looks like an interview with President Mark Reuss. In that teaser clip, Reuss tells the camera, “Anything you need, we’ll help, we will.”
Not only is this sentiment a big reversal from GM’s usually secretive attitude towards EV1s in general, but it’s also a huge win for the people restoring the car and all of the other enthusiasts out there who want to see it running again. Previously, Billy, Jared, and the other folks working on this EV1 were totally on their own with regards to parts, which, as you can imagine, for a car that was never sold to the public, are incredibly hard to come by in the wild.
So, How Is General Motors Helping?
Jared and Billy remained coy about specifics when I asked about GM assisting them—they wanted to save that reveal for a video they’re planning to release next week. In the meantime, it’s easy to make some educated guesses, based on the car’s condition when it was sold back in October.
The most obvious part that needs replacing is the windshield, which is an EV1-only part that wasn’t used on any other model in GM’s portfolio. If you know anything about automotive glass, you’ll know getting a windshield custom-made is wildly expensive—usually around six figures for just a small batch. There’s also the driver’s side quarter panel, which is smashed in, and the original battery pack, which is simply missing. If this were any other General Motors product, you could just go to your local junkyard and pull the pieces off a wrecked example. But here, the parts simply don’t exist outside of GM.
It’s not just body parts that this EV1 needs. Here’s what Billy told me when I spoke to him on the phone back in October:
“The charge cable was cut,” Billy says. “Inside the power inverter module, we’re missing the driveline control module. It’s a computer that’s on the inside of the [power integrated module] that a bunch of these ribbon cables plug into. And one of our ribbon cables is ripped.”
Going by Reuss’s words in the video above, it’s possible GM still has all of this stuff sitting in a warehouse ready to go on the car, and if it doesn’t, then it could lend assistance to get parts remade. While we won’t know for sure until next week, a bit of Google searching revealed an interesting auction listing for a handful of EV1 parts recently sold by GM to an undisclosed buyer.
The auction, held last month by an industrial liquidation firm called BTM Industrial, was simply labeled as “EV1 Parts.” There aren’t any photos of actual parts, but an image listing a bunch of EV1-specific parts, including a windshield, a driver-side quarter panel, battery box harness, an instrument cluster, and a handful of modules and junction boxes. On top of the list, there’s text that reads, “Subject to availability, in GM’s sole discretion.”
While neither GM nor Billy has confirmed anything, it’s entirely possible these are the parts GM is supplying to Billy, Jared, and the rest of the team to keep the restoration rolling. Seeing something as specific as a driver-side quarter panel on the list makes me feel like this must be the case—but again, we won’t know for sure until next week.
Regardless of how much help Billy and Jared are getting from GM, I think this is the best possible outcome. From the jump, there was lots of worry that this project might be shut down or otherwise interrupted by GM, but now that the brand is lending its support, there’s nothing left stopping the team from getting this EV1 back on the road. If GM is really providing all those parts, it could happen a lot sooner than the planned completion date of November 14, 2026 – exactly 30 years since the first drive of the EV1 back in 1996.
Top graphic image: The Questionable Garage / GM
Nice. Why can’t it be that I just saw this going on via You Tube and wanted to help them? No agenda, no other reason.
It’s awesome! We can’t wait to hear more about the project as it goes along.
very based of you Gmdude
I really cannot stand that youtube channel, but it’s a great story and I’m glad the car is getting restored.
Seems like an easy PR win.
I imagine GM is being strategic here for a few reasons.
When the EV1s were originally reclaimed and destroyed, it was mostly because they were essentially prototype-grade cars that weren’t designed to last and that would have been corporate and monetary liabilities if they remained on the roads. But it was also a bit malicious. GM had never wanted to build the EV1…but did so in response to the California Air Resource Board (CARB) threats to automakers whose fleets didn’t include 2% zero-emission vehicles. And unlike Toyota and Ford (and GM’s own S10 EV), the EV1 wasn’t just a modified version of a volume car; it was a ground-up electric vehicle. And so it developed a cult following because GM did too good a job. Thus, when GM wanted to sell high-margin Hummer H2s and Suburbans and Escalades by the truckload, the EV1 was a bit of an unprofitable sore spot. I imagine there was a bit of malice in how the EV1 was handled. “We didn’t do that; it never existed. We can’t make a viable EV and don’t try and make us do so again.”
Fast forward thirty years and a substantial amount of GM’s North American lineup—arguably comprising some of their most-competitive vehicles in a long time—is electric vehicles. Having a grade-A Grandfather EV (under the corporate banner, no less) to point back to is a kind of corporate-image godsend. The fact that it went for so much at auction that it caught the attention of the global car community, not to mention many plebeians who never knew about it…made it an even more compelling case for GM to help out. By contrast, taking their customary military stance and trying to reclaim the EV1 or even declining to comment on it—because they’d have definitely been asked—would have been Bad PR. There was really only one choice here.
It’s also possible that GM’s lawyers were more concerned about that corporate liability when these cars were newer and people were trying to hold onto them, but no longer are. I wouldn’t be surprised if part of GM’s cooperation includes an agreement that they won’t be held liable if the car ends up being a deathtrap or can’t actually be restored.
Or maybe gm was the one who paid 118k for it. in order to build hype. PS- it wasnt that good nor significant a car other than it s gm s first. who d in hell s half acre would pay, what will add up to in the end, ~~ half a million $ to fix up a meh car?
In 2003 or 2004, I spotted Michigan Technological University’s abandoned EV1 sitting in the woods on campus property. A properly enterprising fella would have figured out a way to make it quietly disappear.
Is it still there? Asking for a friend…
Nope, got gathered up with the rest and turned into a box of staplers or something