George Chartier has been fascinated by electric vehicles since boyhood. After a seven-decade wait, he finally got a ride in one, and it was the ride of a lifetime.
Growing up in Wisconsin, George Chartier loved model cars and the promise of electric propulsion in equal measure. He followed those interests in tandem throughout his life, first teaching himself how to build one-off, show-quality, 1/12-scale model concept cars from scratch using raw materials: basswood for the bodies and wispy strips of hand-formed copper that he chromed for the trim.
Like his Craftsman Guild cars, every piece on it was handmade, including a complete interior with tiny instrument gauge faces. Chartier also designed and built the one-off chassis that packages an electric motor, powered by D-cell batteries, and the radio-control hardware to make it run—plus a working suspension and steering system, headlights, turn signals, reverse lights, and a horn. It took some 3000 hours to build.
Chartier remained a Ford clay modeler for 37 years, turning down managerial promotions so he could continue to pursue his love of model making by working on the full-size clays, which were a key part of the vehicle design process, throughout his career. Full-scale clays are still used today to confirm that a new vehicle's lines look as good in real life, at full size, as they do on a computer screen.
Thanks to today's strict emissions controls and much-improved engine sealing technology, gasoline-powered cars run with antiseptic cleanliness. But the automotive world Chartier grew up in was a stinky one. If you love the smell of gasoline in the morning, buy a pre-1970 car, park it in your garage, and enjoy the perfume of unburned hydrocarbons, coolant, and engine oil. And those are the odors just evaporating off the car, let alone the exhaust fumes that it will expel when you fire it up.
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