John Wayland starting a business selling Black Zombie electric muscle cars

John Wayland of Plasma Boy Racing, builder of the White Zombie electric 1972 Datsun, has teamed up with Mitch Medford (a Texas Tech CEO) to start building ultra high end electric muscle cars. The first car they’re planning is the Black Zombie, which is a 1968 Mustang powered by twin Netgain Warp 11 motors and dual Zilla controllers. The car is expected to deliver over 700 horsepower, about 1,800 ft-lbs of torque, and a 120 mile driving range. That is, if you can keep your speed “normal” rather than lead-footing it around town.

Should we change that phrase? “Lithium-footing it”?

The team are starting a business, Bloodshed Motors, where the idea is to build amped up conversions of classic muscle cars. The target market are rich guys with a Tesla Model S who yearn for a muscle car that doesn’t get them dirty.

I wasn’t able to find a website for Bloodshed Motors, and the Plasma Boy Racing website doesn’t have details about this business. (Wayland’s last blog entry is from over 2 years ago, a fascinating story about when he rented an EV1 back in the day.)

The spec’s I’ve gathered from other news reports are:

1968 Mustang – rust free, found in Houston
Dual Netgain Warp 11 motors
Dual Zilla controllers
“Gear Vendors overdrive unit”
40 kilowatt-hour Kokam pack
120 mile range (they didn’t specify test procedure for this)
750 horsepower
1,800 ft-lb torque
“Street or Track-developed coilover shocks” in the front
“Strange Ford 9-inch axle” in the rear along with “Street or Track” suspension
13 inch brakes on all wheels
rollcage
0-60 miles/hr – 3 seconds

While the Black Zombie is street legal, and you could take it grocery shopping or whatever, it’s set up with a particular goal: Drag Racing. Would we expect anything else from John Wayland?

To demonstrate what they’ve built, they’re taking the Black Zombie to an Austin drag strip this week. They’ve borrowed a “1.5 megawatt battery pack” from Don Garlits, that he used in an earlier record run, which in the Black Zombie should put down 1,500 horsepower. With whatever performance it delivers, they’ll open the order book.

The price starts at $200,000 if Bloodshed Motors supplies the donor car. If the customer supplies it, the price drops.

While they’re starting with Mustangs, they expect to branch out to similar muscle cars in the future. The Camaro’s, etc. They may even get into the business of selling kits.

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About David Herron

David Herron is a writer and software engineer living in Silicon Valley. He primarily writes about electric vehicles, clean energy systems, climate change, peak oil and related issues. When not writing he indulges in software projects and is sometimes employed as a software engineer. David has written for sites like PlugInCars and TorqueNews, and worked for companies like Sun Microsystems and Yahoo.