American dad gets ‘weird’ old Citicar to restore it

An American dad has admitted that he bought an old Citicar because he has a ‘soft spot’ for ‘weird’ cars.

If you haven’t seen a Citicar before, you’ll understand what we mean very soon.

YouTuber DIY Dad got his hands on the unusual 1970s car back in 2021, thinking he’d have it up and running in months.

But three years on, he’s just about to get some car batteries, which he hopes will get the Citicar out on the road in a matter of months.

As always with projects like this, we’ll just have to see.

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Bringing a Citicar from Las Vegas to Los Angeles

The 42-year-old admitted that he had a ‘weird obsession’ with Citicars, and had been keeping an eye out for one.

In 2020, he found what he was looking for.

He told Supercar Blondie: “A gentleman posted online that there was an elderly woman in Las Vegas that had four of them.

“It was a six-hour drive from me [In Los Angeles].

“She was getting up there in age and wanted to get rid of them, but wanted to make sure they went to people that weren’t just going to scrap the cars.

“So I had kind of thrown through my name in the ring to go pick one of them up. 

“Everything was confirmed that I was going to get one of the cars, and that was right when Covid hit.”

It wouldn’t be until 2021 that DIY Dad would finally get his chance – at an awkward time.

He recalled: “I got a message that they needed them gone pretty much immediately.

“Just before that message, I had gotten in a really bad mountain bike crash and broke my arm.

“I basically had one arm.

“So with less than 24 hours’ notice, I borrowed a trailer, drove the six hours out to Vegas, loaded the thing with one arm, and then drove right back home with it.”

That’s dedication.

‘It’s the most expensive free thing I ever got’

He imagined it would be a relatively easy project, but it got delayed for years.

“I had this fantasy that when I got the car, I’d have it up and on the road and in a couple of months and then – you know – life happens.

“It’s still sitting in the garage as an ongoing project,” he said.

“It was in really, really rough shape.

“The body of those cars are actually made out of ABS plastic, which is good and bad.

“It’s good because it’s easy to repair, but it also gets brittle with time and heat.

“So there was a lot of body damage. It cracks.

“I’ve been slowly going around the body, plastic welding, the cracks together, the wells where the headlights are, were completely broken out. 

“We’ve actually 3D scanned the front of the car and I printed the 3D printed the parts to insert into those headlight bezels.”

It wasn’t just the exterior of the car that needed work.

“All the running gear on the car was pretty much gone or shot,” he said.

“The motor works. It’s an electric motor, but the batteries were gone. The speed control was gone. 

“A lot of the other electronics underneath the dash have just been gummed up with time.

“So it’s been a process of going through piece by piece, getting everything working and functioning again.”

The biggest hurdle has been securing batteries – something that has only come together recently.

DIY Dad said, “The car originally ran on a 48-volt system of six-volt golf cart batteries.

“The way it worked was basically [as] an old style golf cart controller, essentially where each six-volt battery was in a pair.

“Then, as you push the accelerator, contactors would close, and you’d get 12 volts, 24 volts, 36 volts, 48 volts.

“So it didn’t really have linear acceleration.

“You kind of engage another bank of those batteries.

“The goal with this one is instead of going back to the original lead acid batteries; I’m going to be going lithium with the batteries and then changing that speed controller to a pulse width modulator.

“It’s a linear modern speed control [and] it’ll be a lot more efficient that way.

“I should shave several hundred pounds off the car by going that route. 

“I just got shipping confirmation from our sponsor Epoch Batteries that we officially have a battery sponsor and can move forward with the powertrain on the car.

“I will be launching the first video introducing the car to the channel in the next two weeks or so now that we know we are past that hurdle.”

He estimated that by the time he finished the restoration, he will have spent $5,000 in total.

This is a great deal – considering that other restorations will have cost a whole lot more.

The car that looks like a cheese wedge

DIY Dad admitted that the car’s appeal is in its oddity.

“It looks like a cheese wedge,” he said.

“But also, this was basically considered the first really commercially viable electric car that was put on the market aside from some of the Baker electrics from the turn of the century.

“This was the first one that  was built in any sort of a mass quantity, and had a pretty long run.

“They built  these from the mid seventies into the mid eighties.

“They just didn’t make that many of them, but that’s kind of where it kind of falls into history is kind of the first really commercially successful electric car.”

Sure, it’s odd, but at least it doesn’t have a tail like the Toyota Pod.

What does he want to do with the car once it’s done?

He explained: “It’s probably going to be more of a collectible fun, you know, put around town, go to car shows kind of car.

“The top speed on these things is about 40 to 45 [miles per hour] so it’s obviously not going to be able to do highway speeds.

“Even at 40, 45, it’s the way the car was built, it was built with a lot of golf cart parts. So they weren’t originally meant to ever go that fast.

“The steering can be twitchy at speed.

“The brakes are all drum brakes. So, it’s definitely not a daily driver.

“I mean, I suppose you could, but for me, it wouldn’t work as a daily.”

To check out more of DIY Dad’s content, head over to his YouTube channel.