Enfield

Enfield 8000

The Enfield 8000 is a two-seater battery-electric city car, introduced in 1973 and developed in the United Kingdom by Isle of Wight company Enfield Automotive, owned by Greek millionaire Giannis Goulandris. The car was designed by a group of Greek and British engineers headed by Constantine Adraktas (Chairman and Managing Technical Director of Enfield) with John Ackroyd as project designer, who later went on to the Thrust 2 project. The prototypes and initial production were built at the Somerton Works in Northwood, near Cowes. Immediately after its introduction, production was moved to the Greek island of Syros. 120 cars were built in total, of which 65 were used by the Electricity Council and electricity boards in the south of England. Powered by an 8 bhp (6 kW) electric motor and lead-acid batteries, the car has a top speed of around 48 mph (77 km/h) and a range of around 40 miles (64 km). In Autocar's test in 1975 they found it had a usable range of 25 miles (40 km). It could accelerate from 0 to 10 mph (16 km/h) in 1.6 seconds, 20 mph (32 km/h) in 4.7 seconds and 30 mph (48 km/h) in 15.7 seconds. Brakes are by drums front and back. It has a ladder-type square section tube chassis frame with aluminium alloy body panels stretched over steel frames. It uses suspension parts from the Hillman Imp, doors were adapted from the Mini and a rear axle derived from Reliant three-wheelers.

Text from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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Specifications

Top speed: 77 km/h

Measured facts from Wikidata (CC0). Check the linked sources for citations.

More photos

Sources

Wikidata — https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5377288CC0 1.0 · retrieved 2026-10-01
Wikipedia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enfield_8000CC BY-SA 4.0 · Text © Wikipedia contributors; revision 1375504790 · retrieved 2026-10-01
Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_E8000ECC_in_front_of_the_Electricity_Council_building_after_the_contract_signing.jpgCC BY-SA 3.0 · Photo: Constantine Adraktas at English Wikipedia · retrieved 2026-10-01
Car Model Index — https://models.autoculturesociety.com/Compiled record. Sources that do not permit reuse are not copied; this index is credited instead.