The throaty roar of a Ferrari engine may evoke strong passions in car lovers - but it's the whisper of an electric engine that stirs the romance in one Newtown company.

Electric Classic Cars has completed a six-month project to restore a Ferrari Testarossa by replacing its original engine with batteries used in Tesla electric cars.

This model is the third Testarossa the company has worked on and the fifth Ferrari, having previously converted two 308 models to run on Tesla batteries.

Richard Morgan of Electric Classic Cars said: “One of the main challenges we need to overcome when working on something like a Ferrari is to make sure the conversion doesn’t lose the sports car aspects.

“That means we take care to make sure the weight of the car stays the same post-conversion, while also optimising the weight distribution of the car.

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“With a petrol engine you don’t get much governance over how the weight is split across the car, you can’t really put one half of the engine in the front and another in the back, but you can with batteries.”

As well as replacing the engine with batteries, the work also included fitting wider low profile tyres so the car would handle well with increased power, and fitting semi-active suspension that reacts to changes in the road surface, the same system used on the Pagani Zonda supercar.  

(Image: Electric Classic Cars)

Mr Morgan added: “The time it takes to do a conversion depends on whether it’s a car we have experience with working on. Something we’re familiar with can be as done as quickly as a day, but something entirely new that requires lots of engineering and specialist design work can take up to a year.

“This Testarossa took six months to complete, but we’ve had 16 cars in the workshop over that time all being worked on so it’s been a case of spinning plates sometimes.

(Image: Electric Classic Cars)

“The whole project of converting classic cars started when I wanted to use my own classic cars for daily drives.

"I enjoy classic cars by driving them, not keeping them under lock and key. Doing this was a way to keep them running but without the cost of maintenance and repairs.

“Every customer has their own story and their own reasons for why they come to us. Whether it’s the environment or the running cost, but they want a way to enjoy classic cars more, preserving them while enjoying modern reliability.”