1978 Ford F100 Eluminator Concept Vehicle | Jay Leno's Garage

well you can really feel that monkey suspension on everything i mean you can feel it suspension feel the brakes you know i always say for technology to exceed it can't be equal it's got to be better you know now you're at the point where electricity can exceed internal combustion oh yeah certainly in power and torque and now in range if you're going just by quote a tank full i want another episode of jay leno's garage the car featuring today or the truck i should say 1978 ford f-100 custom with a difference a huge difference this is the ultimate restomod this a lot of people can consider the future of hot routing this was developed in-house at ford this is an all-electric restomod 1978 f-100 custom called the illuminator let's meet dave parasack dave is uh uh director of future electric development at ford uh also the man that of course put the team together that won lamar which is just to me just an amazing story almost as amazing it's developing a whole electric car probably just as much work too yeah now to be here jay what we have here is a mustang mock e gt performance package resto modded into this 78 fortran is that that's right yes and this is our illuminator concept so our ford performance team did a great job of taking the the gt drive line everything the motors the the suspension all of it and literally put it underneath this vehicle now let me see now this originally had what a six cylinder about 113 horsepower yeah and inline six yeah okay and now we're like what 480 480 so we've basically quadrupled quadruple the horsepower horsepower okay now is it a machi chassis or has those parts been put in the chassis of a 78 so this is a custom chassis oh it is yep it's a custom chassis uh but it takes all of the components of a maki gt performance edition and puts it all into that custom chassis and then underneath okay but the wheelbase of this is not the same as the wheelbase on the marquee that's correct okay so this is a again a separate chassis it is all right again with all the bits and pieces every bit of it and as we go on the inside of the vehicle you're going to see that we've taken the maki inside as well all right well i mean it it's great i mean this is the kind of thing that uh people i mean trucks are a bigger part of hot rodding now as 32 fords used to be when i was a kid sure what is under the hood here are there do we see batteries what do we see well let's take a look okay i have not looked under here so i have no idea this would be my first time so you can see jay there's a bit of a frunk as we call them now right right a front trunk and then you've got you can see the suspension bits coming through and you can see how we've this is the one one of the motors you know the maki gt performance uh all monkeys but they have two motors right uh and this actually this motor that you're looking at right now is the first electric crate motor the illuminator that we have now in ford performance parts and so we are offering this motor for sale right so those that want to do restaurant mods like this they'll be able to go and get that electric and what will a motor like this cost and it's just about four thousand dollars oh wow so it's a lot it's cheaper than doing a internal combustion engine isn't it yeah it is yeah there's there's obviously other parts that have to come with it with the battery and everything right but from a motor perspective itself yeah i mean i recognize these pieces here as just the standard ford sort of pieces yeah uh but this does obviously the suspension of a maki look nothing like this well no not the way that the uh the braces have come together again that's that unique chassis we talked about but when you go underneath that all of the the shocks the the everything the control arms it's all maki right out of the maki does the engine sit this high in the maki as well it doesn't sit quite that high right it's not a one for one translation that's what i yeah that's what i thought because this seems to be it almost seems like that's where the motor is even though you know right internal combustion okay right well again as we talk you know this is bringing all of that componentry into something that is already established you know and so i'm assuming and i will find out very quickly it doesn't handle anything like a 78 ford truck it does not no so you've got again all your pieces sort of at axle height yeah it's going to handle amazing and what's your weight distribution you have an energy front it must be pretty good yeah the weight distribution is good overall weight of the vehicle is high as you can imagine with that big battery that's underneath is this is it lighter than a maki because it has no airbags or any of that well that's a great question it's actually slightly heavier really yes slightly heavier than a maki gt performance edition because i think the marquee has to have the door guard beam the big steel piece yep all those safety devices all but it just goes to show you that you know the engineering back then and the engineering we have today how much more efficient we can pull off some of the extra content that you're talking about okay so it's actually slightly heavier okay let's see we can shut this again i'm trying to think what else i mean looking at this on the street i would just think it was a lowered custom painted you know no chrome bumper all that kind of stuff f-100 right well that was part of the the intention was to be able to do a resto mod but still keep the essence of the f-100 we didn't want to but do it in a very modern package you know and like i said when we go driving j i can't wait for you to hit that accelerator and what you're going to feel yeah i'm curious i'm curious because obviously the antenna is new but it's still pretty old school i love the wheels and the caps rather than just having some sort of mag wheel on it i love the body colored uh or the trim colored wheels match the trim very yeah so that's avalanche gray uh it's got copper accents on it as you can see those those wheels are 19-inch the original truck had 15-inch wheels right um and we've got 275 tires on it uh so you got some you know some good contact with the ground there to put down that power so you've got sort of sports car handling for lack of a better yes it handles like a maki yeah yeah it really does because you've got the whole brake system out of a maki you've got you've got everything out of the maki uh so it absolutely handles amazing now you'll still get some of that vintage nvh jay when we go driving right right you'll still get you'll still get a bit of that but you'll be blown away at how fast and how well it's really fun to see you know it just takes hot rodding in a different direction when i was a kid it was flathead engines and then it was overhead valve engines and then guys started putting engines in the back of the barracudas and you had rear engine you know a little red wagon all the kind so now and now they've made the the uh the move too electric and the fact that you could pretty much electrify any vintage ford vehicle at this point with this engine couldn't you you sure yeah you could yeah yeah now we obviously chose the f-100 because of uh a lot of reasons one just the success of the f series i mean if you think about it this started it and we just built our 40 millionth f series about four days ago really yes wow that's pretty amazing just rolled off the assembly line the amazing thing to me is and we'll see that in a minute you've got the full bed you know even the corvair ramp side which is rear engine their their truck and that was a pickup truck you have the and that goes up in a big compromise the bed yeah they had to compromise the bed because the engine was back there right i mean the fact that this is a front engine and a rear engine vehicle there's no indication it's a rear engine vehicle at all yeah we were quite surprised when we started to look at it as to how well it was all going to fit underneath here uh clearly we had to customize the chassis but i mean it it fit pretty pretty good yeah and it'd be kind of fun to even put a camera shell on it yeah you could do that and then run electric device you know you could right because you've got all that power available yeah you can watch tv at night or watch a movie or something yeah endless possibilities yeah it's pretty neat yeah that's something and then as we go on the inside of the vehicle j you'll see the technology and everything that we transferred from the steering wheel to the seats to the infotainment to the it's all come over from the maki gt i like the touches on it it's not i hate these crazy customs where you know you have chrome-plated rotors and things you could never really have in real life i i like sometimes when they go to the roadster shows yep they're show cars to the point where you can't drive them sure you know uncomfortable or different whereas this is something you can actually use as a truck and even though i i know it's it's a fortune to do because it's done in-house at ford and so you have to start with a maki it still looks like it's attainable obviously the average person putting a crate motor in can't afford to do a whole marquee but they can afford to do the crate motor and you know the important parts to get you down that road yeah that's yeah that's that's pretty we're going to continue to keep working on bringing that that to the aftermarket you know for people who do want to do those resto mods i mean this is exciting stuff i mean you've got an f-100 but it's the most modern you can never dream of the f-100 being what this is now something i didn't think about on the marquee the anchor this has air conditioning is does the air conditioning run off the electric motor or does it just draw power from the batteries and it's a separate draws power from the battery okay so there's no power drive off an electric motor running a compressor no no okay okay so it runs strictly off off the battery okay off the power of the battery right very good very good uh what else can we have here let's see let's take a look at the inside i think we should even hand crank windows look at that well you're not going to get rid of those jay they got to have those i mean that keeps it authentic well you know my favorite thing with a friend of mine came with his kids dad look and they hopped in my 65 mustang and they cranked the window down then the kid they were the kids let me try and the two of them were racing to each other putting the window up and down it really made me laugh well it looks totally mucky on the inside you know i have to admit i kind of miss part of the fun of having a retro vehicle is the old gauges and the old speedometer you know you get near 100 it's doing this and all that and a lot of places will take your old speedometer and modify it to run electric you know sure or or to run even even satellite but keeping the face you know right because now i know i'm in a modern electric vehicle but it's kind of fun to have it look like an f-150 from the early days inside yeah yeah but this is obviously very cool because this is a custom vehicle yeah and you'll notice that everything is basically transferred over from the 15 and a half inch center screen to that you know like everything that you have in the maki is here so that but then you can see what we've done with the instrument panel here this is you know it looks very f-100 it does look f100 and you know it's funny because back in the day you never got leather stitching and all this kind of stuff i think that really started because of there was a law they passed in america any car more than thirty thousand dollars you paid a five percent luxury tax fee because anything over 30 000 was a luxury car unless it was a truck so that's why they built the lincoln blackwood and that's why they started building luxury trucks because with that five percent you got the free luxury you know right right makes sense yeah yeah it was kind of a smart idea i thought at the time um and i think that's led to now you just expect trucks to have every conceivable massage seat feature and they do and they do i know i know it's amazing the idea of having something where you slam the door and it goes you know and you put it in drive and you go you know it's yeah pretty cool pretty cool like i said when we drive it um as modern as this thing is yeah um you're gonna get that that that old-school nvh and it'll it'll it'll remind you you're in enough right right all right very good this is is that an adjustable oh no they had a problem with it they have to replace that that whole column all right so unfortunately you're gonna have to drive it with it that's fine that's fine everything else starts exactly the same press the button here yeah everything else does the exact same way yeah yeah it's all coming up right now your phone's starting to charge now you didn't even have a cell phone in 1970 no you didn't have it nor could you charge it no no no could you charge it you couldn't charge it because you didn't have one exactly but they didn't have car phone you know a friend of mine's got a a a mobile phone i think it's it has to be late 40s early 50s it's an enormous suitcase wow it's a big suitcase and you really need to be strong because it carries these lead acid batteries and you were something if you had that that powered the you know you opened the suitcase and you make a call you know i mean it was a radio phone right which is what they yeah yeah just before the bag phones yeah yeah exactly exactly but very of course you've got every power steering every other feature yep yeah this is pretty neat this is pretty neat i'm looking forward to you driving it uh well let's uh let's take it for a drive and see what she does let's do it you know it's funny it feels low it feels like you're hugging the ground yeah that's that battery yeah just because all the weight is down low yeah oh yeah that's pretty good i see you still got the wind noise right well the issue that's interesting it showed you how far aerodynamics have come right you know because this makes all kinds of wind noise purely because it's not error it hasn't been aerodynamiced out exactly i mean aerodynamic you know in 2005 we took that porsche current gt around talladega we're doing 100 laps at like 190 okay and it was like hey you know you could feel it moving around sure especially after about 60 laps you're like and then 15 years later i'm at millbrook in the corvette and we did 50 laps at 204 and i'm i'm having a discussion like we're talking yeah and it wasn't i didn't feel i had to well you know just lightly get into everything because the wind didn't move me around that much and that shows you how much aerodynamics have improved just in that short period of time when we first took the ford gt up over 200 in testing yeah the test driver came back and he had you know gotten a little bit over 200 and he came back and he said well i could eat the sandwich out there yeah you know i mean it was it was uneventful i went to millbrook i've never been there and i meet with um taj duke he and i are going to go do this so i said i said tell us before we start tell me uh tell me the first time he went to under the corvette he goes oh i never have i do never have so your first time as a comedian who's never been on the track before and a car had never been in is that what you told me he goes yeah i guess so but it was fun it was fine but i just as somebody went 203 times a week right well that's one of the things um you know i i'm constantly out on the track staying up on my my driving certification and i think it's important when you're developing videos oh yeah yeah you know maybe it's psychological but i feel like i i can feel the the tailgate acting like a windbreak you know it feels like that well it yeah i mean i take my foot off the mock e and i'm coasting i take my foot off this and i find myself slowing down not so much from slow speeds but yeah it's uh it's pretty amazing though how you can you can marry you know technology with with old school and get something that's pretty special yeah i mean anything that saves a vehicle is fun for me i like the idea of that and to me it's the ultimate recycling i mean you're taking something old and reusing it again for the exact same purpose and the less environmentally damaging way right i mean this doesn't use gasoline it and now i you know it it it makes perfect sense what's gonna be interesting to see where we get on in the aftermarket and and how we do these rest restorations in the future here and how we can like you said how we can reuse but do it in a more you know responsible it's just a different muscle you're using you know i was talking with some of the electrical vehicle guys you know and i walked over in the midst they were having a conversation and as they're talking about voltage and electronics i felt like my mother you know it can i get you boys something to drink you know i don't know i don't know what you're talking i know what i'm doing here right you know there's no cam shafts with no valves there's no tuning there's no it was all strictly homes and vaults and power okay i guess so yeah but like i say it's always it's like rap and rock and roll they're both music and occasionally you can put the two together so you get a little bit of both like with a hybrid vehicle yep but this is still hot rodding i mean you're making the vehicle five times faster than it ever was oh yeah oh yeah and it's more efficient i mean it handles better it stops better so i guess it's a hot rod it doesn't always have to have an internal combustion engine you know no i agree this is very much a hot rod i don't know what the 060 times were in the f-100 when it first came out but i got i gotta believe well i think you were using a wall clock for that we haven't had an official time on this one yet but it's quick yeah but i mean it is funny because everything was single purpose everything now is multi-purpose you know in the old days you bought a two-seater car to go fast and you know you could get a lot of radio and a heater and of course your job was just to go fast right now i want a sports car but i also have three kids and i also want to be able to go to home depot and bring home some lumber okay so you get the suv so you need one thing to be all things now i mean i come from that era of like i like a sedan and i like to have a truck i don't want a truck that's also a sedan but right logically it makes more sense i suppose i'll tell you it never gets old just having that power anytime you want it yeah and and you can use it all the time and then you got people that are into hypermiling you know or they drive barefoot with their big toe trying to use no air conditioner windows up just trying to get the most mileage that's okay it's all it's all what whatever game you like sure there's some serious hypermilers out there yeah i know i know the great thing is we're all learning in this electrical evolution here yeah it's going to be interesting to see where it goes i was in the tesla semi and that thing pulls eighty thousand pounds jesus and it's zero to sixty in under three seconds and it was like being in a moving building you just well the whole buildings it just goes it's amazing i mean imagine something like heavy going like like that you know i know that's think about how you know it wasn't that long ago that you couldn't even think about harnessing that kind of power for any length of time right and look where we are now i mean oh i think the thousand miles on a charge is not that far away a couple of years maybe battery technology's moving quick jay yeah between the you know the chemistry changes that are happening you know i have an alkaline battery at the garage there that thomas edison himself built and he sent a letter to henry ford at a dinner in detroit saying this is going to put your model t out of business he developed this alkaline battery so you could charge it and when the alkaline wore out you just dump it out you pour in fresh alkaline and you charge it again so the batteries could be used over and over again yeah and it was going to revolutionize the electric car of course it never did because they most people didn't have electricity in their cars still a lot of people in 1909 yeah and and there was no 240 there was no way to make it you know but it's it's interesting to see that they've been thinking about it all this time it's only in the last couple of decades you've seen that taken through fruition yeah well i mean you know figuring out how to crack that nut if you will on the battery has been no small feat yeah yeah and we're all still working on it open my window to adjust my mirror do you need this one no that's all right yeah there's no little switch to i know it's funny i love watching you crank the window that's well this is a little stiffer than i remember them being well you know what i say that too when i when i get in the car that has i have several cars is that just because we remembered it differently or is that really how it was yeah we're just getting older it's like pickle jars are a lot tighter now to get open you know yes they are but you can really feel that maki suspension and everything underneath you can feel the suspension you feel the brakes you know i always say for technology to exceed it can't be equal it's got to be better you know when the wankel came out it was good but it wasn't better you had to check the oil every second fill up and gas mileage was not as good as gas so yeah what was the advantage other than light weight and and maybe a little more power no torque but a lot of power you know so consequently the wankel just fell by the wayside now you're at the point where electricity can exceed internal combustion oh yeah certainly in power and torque and now in range if you're going just by quote a tank full you know yeah oh definitely in the power and torque though it's not even a contest wow this feels really it's just got a a different rear-end ratio because i've driven a regular marquee this feels faster because this is the gt isn't it this is the gt right yeah gt performance edition yeah i mean listen to all that wind noise like when the eye of the hurricane going into the eye of the hurricane see if we would have fixed that then you would have said it wasn't in that planet i know well they weren't going that fast back then they didn't have to worry about it you know that is true though they weren't going that far right because when i drive i've got a few when i drive my 66 lincoln continental oh this feels 70 was fast sure most people drove 55 to 60 in the six in the 60s yep you know they're not you're here in the freeway it's either bumper-to-bumper or people are going 90 right now right and the lincoln continental 90. you're kind of walking around a little bit it's a little entertaining yeah yeah exactly it just pulls so hard it does feels really good here's a question nobody has asked what's up is it harder to steal an electric vehicle because they haven't heard of any being stolen be they teslas or the new audi or any of the electric cars thieves have not figured out how to do that just yet well that's interesting i mean i think have you heard anything about that no i mean i think i mean are they inherently safer against that type of thing no not inherently i mean i i think that we have been getting so much better as an automotive industry on creating interlocks in the systems right so that it's become harder and harder for thieves uh you know believe me we spent a lot of effort jay in trying to figure out how to keep them secure yeah i can remember the old days i knew guys that had tons of keys because all the major manufacturers that have a few dozen versions of the same key but then it would work you know if you had all of them and you ah i got one and you got you got one that will open at some point that was the security yeah that was yeah not anymore everything is interlocked you can't do anything you know yeah remember the club that used to connect your pedal to oh yeah and those were huge they sold millions of them really did now is the electric motor currently for sale or it's coming up no it's currently for sale and in fact our first uh run our first production run uh is all spoken for wow um now the volumes are lower right now but uh you know yeah the demand has been a lot of interest in it and then what we're going to keep doing is we're going to we're going to work on bringing more and more of a turnkey solution right you know the controls the bad like all of it right right you know there's a lot of guys who are modding stuff right now and they they they can take the motor and they know what to do with it but the average person would need some assistance right right um but we're working on how to make it more of a turnkey total kit if you will to me i tell you you know i mean i love the nostalgia of the old cars and i love the roar of the engines and all of that but there's something super cool about this whole vehicle with this new power train in it yeah i think it's pretty cool and i think the one place you really would see it is in redoing old luxury vehicles like the ltd or the lincoln you know and you could even do away with the noise it makes which you have to do legally right does the engine make that same noise or is that just when you buy the electric motor does it have that noise no you if you have to put the sound around is what you're talking about yeah you would have to put that on to become legal right right yeah but if you read your old car you'd be all right then you'd have something totally silent well dave thanks for showing us the future hot rodding guys will still build gas engines it's just this is for a whole different crowd you can build something totally different and that's what i like i mean you know hot rodding is all about innovation and it's a combination of nostalgia and innovation and this is the classic example of that so it's great dave thanks again for bringing this thank you always fun to get an exclusive appreciate it see you guys next time [Music] uh

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 479,514

Keywords: #EV #ElectricCar #FutureTech #GearHead #Ford #Restomod #F100 #CarPorn #HighGasPrices

Id: IJQZzg6rWyo

Length: 27min 34sec (1654 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 14 2022