John Surtees Drives Through Channel Tunnel in Electric Ginetta

How cool is John Surtees? At 75 years old, the racing legend, who got his start as the guy riding in the side car in motorcycle side car racing (his dad was at the controls), a man who was world champion on two wheels as well as four, Surtees decided that a fun thing to do would be to drive a Ginetta electric vehicle through Chunnel.

John Surtees is a Grand Prix motorcycle champion, winning the title in 1956, 1958 (twice, in two divisions), 1959 (also twice), 1960 (twice again) AND a Formula One World Champion, winning for Ferrari in 1964. Top that Valentino Rossi. Shoot, can anyone top that? Short answer: No. Surtees is the only man who is a champion on two wheels as well as four.

So why now? Why an electric car? Why the Chunnel? Well, first off, it's the Chunnel's 15th birthday, so that's probably reason enough. But there's also this thing called the Beaujolais Run, which seems to be an excuse for a bunch of rich Brits (and other Euro types) to drive hot cars from England to the Beaujolais region of France, pick up some wine, and come back. No. Really.

And speaking of hot cars, Surtees' ride for all this is pretty interesting. You all know, or should know, about Ginetta. They've been making lightweight British sports cars, in sort of a cottage industry fashion, for quite some time now; since the 1960s, as a matter of fact.

For this run, il Grand John (as Enzo used to refer to his former driver, who's quite short) drove a Ginetta GV50EV electric prototype. The Ginetta G50 Electric Vehicle uses 100% electric power to motivate its two-seater sports car up to a top speed 120 mph and giving it a range of 250 miles on a full charge. The power is delivered directly to the rear wheels "maintaining the ‘fun factor’ of the petrol-powered equivalent," says Ginetta. Naturally, we agree with them (and so does John, one would assume).

Surtees had the rep of being a little bit crazy back when he was racing for real. Doesn't seem to have tapered off much, now has it?

Source: AutoBlogGreen