800 HP Zombie 222 Electric Mustang Goes 174 MPH At The Texas Mile

RV_ · April 21, 2015

It is obvious, since Musk released all of his patents for general use earlier this year, that worldwide the "major" car companies are working hard at a 200 mile per charge all EV. In the two years that the Roadster was sold, 2008-2010, the only company to actually develop an actual EV was Nissan with their 60 mile range Leaf. (The roadsters were actually sold out in advance with 100% down reservations for most of its production run,)

Musk wanted more competition than that. The much ballyhooed Chevy Volt was just another hybrid, and because Tesla pays for no advertising, there are people that think there is no difference between a plug in hybrid, and an EV.

All of the "majors" say they will have their EVs to market in 2017 when Tesla is scheduled to première their economy model.

Once that disruption occurred, another disruption has begun. The segment of the car fanatic group, those like Shelby and Musk who built their super cars that were rarer than every other "muscle car." So generations of hot rudders, custom builders, and custom car builders have been turning out their dream minster muscle car.

Enter the Zombie. A guy in Austin has created what some few diehards consider a sacrilege. He took a gorgeous 1968 Mustang and turned it into a gorgeous world record holder for the top speed in any type of car set by Carol Shelby at the famed Texas Mile Speedway.

Mitch Medford is the guy who for his first classic muscle car conversion of what he hopes to be an ongoing biz producing the new generation of one off unique muscle cars, all electric muscle. The name of his custom car shop? The Bloodshed! What else?

Excerpt:

"The world’s most expensive supercars can hit 60 miles per hour in less than three seconds. The fastest production car in the world, the Hennessey Venom GT, does it in 2.7; Lamborghini’s 602-horsepower V-10-powered Huracán has been unofficially clocked at 2.5. If you were sitting in a Huracán right now, you could go from zero to 60 in less time than it takes to read this sentence. But somewhere in a Texas garage sits a strange car that’s even quicker: a 1968 Mustang fastback known as the Zombie 222, and it’s entirely electric.

Tapping an array of giant motors, controllers, and batteries — cast in a fluorescent green with blue LEDs for effect — the Zombie 222 produces over 800 horsepower and a mind-numbing 1,800 pounds of torque. Those numbers translate into a 0–60 time of just 2.4 seconds, a remarkable eighth-mile time of 6.8 seconds at 101 mph and an estimated quarter-mile time of 10.7 seconds at 125 mph.

But forget numbers: smash the accelerator of the Zombie 222, and you can feel your internal organs abandon their rightful homes and fly against the back of your rib cage. That kind of acceleration will make a 5’11", 245-pound cameraman giggle like a little boy riding his first roller coaster. That’s not hyperbole — I’ve seen it happen.

The Zombie 222 is the brainchild of Mitch Medford, a muscle car enthusiast who left a career in tech to launch Bloodshed Motors, a garage that offers an unusual service: converting classic cars into high-speed electric machines that can pummel the most powerful supercars in the world. The ’68 fastback is Bloodshed’s first — and so far, only — project. Medford hopes that one day his four-wheeled creatures will be roaming streets and highways around the world, but first, he has to prove what the Zombie is made of.

Mitch Medford may as well have been born in an auto shop and delivered by a mechanic. He comes from a long line of mechanics and moonshiners — in fact, he’s named after Robert Mitchum, the producer, writer, and star of 1958’s Thunder Road, a seedy noir about a fast-driving illegal booze runner. At 53, Medford still has the good-humored energy of a middle school class clown: eager to tease friends, offer up a groan-worthy joke, or riff on a plot for a Fast and Furious film starring himself and the Zombie. He’s also a born storyteller, peppering his anecdotes with expressions that reveal his roots in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains — an underpowered car, he’ll tell you, "can’t pull a greasy string out of a cat’s ass."

The article goes on to cover, in-depth, this astonishing story of the car from Bloodshed: http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/1/8320189/zombie-222-electric-car-1968-mustang-texas-mile