The Electric 911 Porsche Never Built
How Barry Ritholtz, One Tired 911, and One Austin Skunkworks Rewired an Icon
By any rational measure, this should not have happened.
Economically, it is indefensible. Mechanically, it borders on heresy. Theologically, and Porsche ownership is largely a theological exercise, it is outright blasphemy. A classic 1980s 911, stripped of its air-cooled flat-six and G50 gearbox, and reborn as an electric car. That’s the burn in hell kind of blasphemy.
And yet, in August of 2024, after two years, six figures, and multiple moments that could be described as “character building,” legendary Wall Street asset manager Barry Ritholtz took delivery of a Lagoon Green Metallic 1987 Carrera that is now a 400+ horsepower, rear-motor, battery-fed, one-off electric 911.
This is the story of how it went down.
THE IDEA
Like most terrible financial decisions, this one began innocently.
Ritholtz had spent the pandemic doing what every enthusiast with means and a flexible definition of “need” did: finding unloved machines and making them right. A flood-salvage Wrangler Rubicon. An Audi R8 turned back to its Teutonic self after someone slathered it in orange stripes and fake carbon. A Colombian-restored 1978 Toyota FJ40 that required a tango with Miami customs.. Then a tired but rare factory M491 Porsche Cabriolet, brought sympathetically back to stock.
This wasn’t novelty. It was a pattern. He’d grown up around loud, front-engined American V8s — Mustangs, Camaros, Corvettes developing, over decades, the kind of dangerous confidence that comes from having endured enough mechanical pain to think the next one will be simple.
Then the itch changed.
Electrification of classics had crept from home garage science project to cottage industry. The pitch is seductively modern: take an older car with beautiful bones and questionable internals, and give it instant torque, reliability, and daily-driver usability. Keep the charm, lose the headaches. Purists clutched pearls. Engineers grinned. Investors did the mental math: classic looks plus EV drivability equals future money. Or money pit? Maybe the jury is still out?
Ritholtz wanted to build something that shouldn’t exist.
The target was obvious in retrospect: a Porsche 911, specifically something from 1973–1989. Those cars are now modern classics. They still have the slim hips and bright eyes of early 911s but the later ones carry just enough ‘80s menace.
That was the aesthetic he wanted. That, but electric.
There was, of course, the small matter of reality.
THE SHOP
The center of American resto-mod electrification right now isn’t Stuttgart or Silicon Valley. It’s Austin, Texas. Yee-haw!
Moment Motors, a boutique EV conversion outfit based there, had been quietly building a reputation for thoughtful, deeply engineered swaps. Not just “jam a forklift motor in a Beetle and pray,” but proper, integrated conversions. Battery management. Thermal management. Usability. Elegance.
Ritholtz spoke with them, looked at timelines, looked at cost, and did the only logical thing he could do: he sent them money. A deposit, June of 2022. That bought him something you cannot order from Porsche Classic. The wait? Twelve months before they even touch your car.
This lag was not a bug. It was oxygen. It meant he now had a year to a) choose the right 911, b) learn that 911’s ecosystem enough to be dangerous, and c) actually find a donor worth hacking apart.
Because here’s the dirty truth of EV-swapping a classic 911: you don’t start with a nice car.
A low-mileage, numbers-matching G50 Carrera is now a financial instrument. You don’t pull a healthy flat-six out of a museum-grade example. That’s vandalism, and wasteful, because you’re throwing away tens of thousands of dollars of engine and gearbox someone else will happily pay you for.
No, the perfect donor is cosmetically attractive, structurally honest, mechanically… negotiable. You want great paint, straight metal, decent interior bones, intact brakes and steering. Something that the concours crowd will sneer at, so you can violate it guilt-free.
That car eventually revealed itself. But first, there were false starts.
THE HUNT
In late 2022 and early 2023, he started searching inventory across the country. California. The Northeast. Dealer listings, private listings, Bring a Trailer, Cars & Bids, PCar Market. He’d fly in early for a work trip, detour to see a “clean, well-sorted” 911SC in person, and discover it was a rattle-can respray over rust and regret. The owner probably huffing the spray paint while doing the respray.
Photos lie. Mileage lies. Sellers lie to themselves. And to potential buyers.
He looked at a 1978 911SC and a 1983 car with a tolerable asking price but an uninspiring color combo. He was briefly smitten by a Cassis Red over Ivory 1987 G50, but that auction failed to meet reserve. He lusted after an RSR-style backdated ’73 and a surgically clean 1976 911S with a 3.2 swapped in, but both were too nice to butcher. If Barry is anything, he’s not a heathen.
The economics were clarifying. The right donor 911 was going to cost somewhere in the $50–60K range. The EV hardware; electric motor, controller, inverter, battery modules, chargers, thermal systems would cost nearly as much again. Add labor and custom engineering, and you were in the neighborhood of a well-optioned new 911 Carrera.
Why not just buy the new 911? Because Porsche builds about ten thousand internal-combustion 911s a year. An electrified, battery-fed G50 from the Reagan era? There is only one of those, and you will be sitting in it. “There can be only one!”
Still, “unique” doesn’t mean “available.” He bid on dozens of cars. Came in second. Came in first but missed reserve. Watched good cars spike out of budget. Watched bad cars get bid up by people with more optimism than brains.
Finally, one stuck.
THE DONOR
The car that would become the electric 911 began life in 1987 as a Carrera coupe with a five-speed G50 gearbox. By the time Ritholtz found it, it had lived.
It wore Lagoon Green Metallic. An unusual Porsche color that reads like a pale blue under most light. It was a “slicktop,” meaning factory sunroof delete, the holy grail for people who value chassis rigidity and hate leaks. It had a rear wiper, another odd but desirable option. It had clearly been loved, but also clearly been “personalized” in the way that screamed JC Whitney.
The odometer read 276,000 kilometers. The driver’s seat and steering wheel were ‘90s-era upgrades, not original. The mirrors were later teardrops, not period. The bumpers had been tweaked toward Turbo look. Carfax showed an impact to the right front in 2003. The doors had been refinished; their hue didn’t quite match the rest of the shell. Underneath, there were hints of rust in the usual 911 spots.
In other words: perfect. At least for this project.
This wasn’t a concours queen. This was a survivor. A frankencar. Valuable enough to respect but not so precious you’d feel bad about going all Dr. Frankenstein on it.
He negotiated. The seller was motivated. They split the difference at $59,000.
When the car arrived at his shop, it turned out to be better than the photos. Werks1, a Porsche specialist, went through it: brake lines, tires, basic electrical gremlins, a small rust bloom behind the battery tray. They handled the stuff you want sorted before you ship a car across the country.
Then came cosmetics. The car was detailed, paint-corrected, ceramic-coated. The shabby floor mats came out, the carpets were shampooed, and in a move equal parts SoCal outlaw and Martini Racing cosplay, went bold “Carrera” script and a pair of soft white racing stripes straight over the hood, roof, and decklid. The look wasn’t subtle. It also wasn’t apologizing.
The plan was now real. The donor existed. The slot in Austin was coming due.
The 911 was about to lose its soul but gain immortality.
THE SURGERY
August 2023: the Carrera, now affectionately “the little striped monster,” was loaded on a transporter bound for Texas. An AirTag in the glovebox tracked it as it crossed the country.
Moment Motors received the car, rolled it into the operating theater, and did the unthinkable: they pulled the heart.
Engine and gearbox out. Gone.
In their place would eventually live a Fellten electric drive unit and enough lithium to start a small fire. But first, there was metalwork.
Classic 911 people know about the battery tray. Porsche, in its wisdom, stuffed a 12-volt battery up against the inner fender at the left front corner of the “frunk,” just above the road. Thirty-plus years of moisture, acid, and indifferent maintenance can turn that area into swiss cheese.
On this car, it was worse than anyone expected. The corrosion had eaten its way into structural metal. And that mattered. Because the new EV battery modules, roughly 200 pounds of them, were meant to sit up front. Hanging a hundred kilos of chemistry off a compromised corner is how you end up on YouTube for the wrong reasons.
So the Austin crew cut. Fabricated. Welded. Refinished. Nine thousand dollars later, the nose of the car was stronger than when it had left Stuttgart.
Only then did the real fun begin.
The original plan, back when Ritholtz first wired his deposit in 2022, called for a Fellten Series I drive unit. That package would have given the car around 350 horsepower.
But technology moves. Fellten sunset the Series I and replaced it with the Series II. The newer motor/inverter package made 440 horsepower.
Four hundred and forty.
In a ~ 2,800 pound 911.
The Fellten kit didn’t just bring power. It brought integration. Cooling circuits. High-voltage routing. A proper vehicle control unit (VCU) to manage temperatures, protect the battery, and talk politely to the rest of the car. Moment Motors grafted in a new HVAC system, because if you’re going to daily an ‘80s 911 in the modern world, you want actual defrost and the possibility of not sweating through your shirt. They even fitted a period-correct Blaupunkt Bremen head unit. Bluetooth, yes, but with the upright, knurled-button vibe of proper Reagan-era German audio.
One of the small tragedies of most EV swaps is the death of the manual. The physics just don’t require a five-speed. Electric motors make torque everywhere, all at once. You could, in theory, bolt the motor directly to the axle and call it done.
But engagement matters. Memory matters.
So the Moment Motors team retained the 911’s floor-mounted stick. The pattern now selects Drive, Neutral, and Reverse rather than five forward gears, but from the driver’s hand, in motion, you are still doing the old 911 thing: right arm resting on the tunnel, wrist flicks, mechanical clicks. The form is the function. And in this case, the form is also the nostalgia.
They also repurposed the original fuel filler door as the charge port, because of course they did. Anything else would be uncivilized.
By April of 2024, the car was about 90 percent complete. The batteries were in. The motor was in. The wiring looms were routed and secured. The software was talking to the hardware. The car drove, and drove quickly at that.
But power is only half the equation. The other half is balance.
THE BALANCE
A stock Carrera of this era carries roughly 39 percent of its weight on the front and 61 percent on the rear. That is part of the 911’s charm and also part of its reputation for spinning into hedgerows.
The electrified car is different. Shifting heavy battery mass forward, reinforcing the nose, and hanging an electric drive unit out back with less reciprocating mass than the original flat-six changes the physics. The Moment Motors build ended up much closer to 50/50 weight distribution, and with that weight also sitting lower in the chassis.
Anyone who has ever trail-braked a 911 into a fast sweeper just sat up a little straighter. Never lift your foot off the gas. Ask me how I know?
Of course, perfection has a price to pay. You don’t add roughly 300 pounds of battery to a classic 911 without asking the suspension to carry that load. So the Austin crew upgraded the dampers and springs to keep the body controlled and the steering alive. The brakes, still essentially 1987-spec apart from regenerative assistance, now have to cope with a 400-horsepower car that weighs about ~ 2,800 pounds and arrives at corner entries with unholy urgency. Mild regen helps, but a future upgrade to later, larger Porsche calipers and rotors is already on the to-do list.
Then there’s traction. When you more than double output, the rear tires become suggestions rather than guarantees. Ritholtz is already thinking about “fatter rubber, especially out back,” which is the genteel way of saying, “I would prefer not to die.”
THE RESULT
August 2024. The converted 911 comes home.
It arrives in the middle of tropical storm chaos, rain blown sidelong. The car survives shipping, humidity, bureaucracy. It rolls into the garage under its own power. Silent except for fan whirr and tire noise. No idle burble. No oil smell. No mechanical shiver through the rear decklid. Just a hum, a glow of gauges, and a faint sense that the future has crawled into a past decade and made camp.
Something inside me died as I wrote that. I had an ‘88 3.2. Nothing was sweeter than the sound of the flat six creaking and cracking as it cooled down in your garage. But I get it. And I respect it.
On the road, the car is shockingly quick. In “Chill” mode, output is dialed back to around 300 horsepower, and range stretches into the 150-plus mile range. Toggle to “Sport,” and you’re looking at something like 400+ horsepower available more or less instantly. The shove is linear, relentless, deceptively calm. There is no torque hole, no cam changeover, no boost threshold. You press the go-peddle and it goes!
Steering feel survives. In fact, with the suspension sorted to account for the new mass, front-end bite is described as “surprisingly precise and lively.” There is a hint of understeer if you hamfist the throttle mid-corner. The old snap-oversteer demon seems to have been exorcised by lithium and geometry.
Not everything is perfect. The air conditioning is “not bad,” which is loosely translated as “better than stock but not German executive-sedan cold.” Cooling the motor and battery under full load needed more capacity than Fellten originally spec’d, so Moment Motors added a second cooling loop. Packaging that much heat management into a 40-year-old shell is not trivial. It works, but you can sense the effort.
The interior is, in Ritholtz’s words, “dowdy.” The light beige seats and carpets have all the excitement of a Boca Raton waiting room. That will change. The plan is to backdate the cabin visually: ‘70s-style tartan inserts in blues, greens, and blacks on the seat centers, door cards, and dash stripe. Think gentleman hooligan.
And the economics? By his rough math, all-in cost over two years lands somewhere around “walk into a Porsche dealer and buy yourself a nice new 911.” That sentence will make some people scoff and others nod. Both miss the point.
Because here’s what you cannot buy at a Porsche dealer, at any price: a factory-sunroof-delete, rear-wiper, Lagoon Green Metallic G50 911 with Carrera script and racing stripes, original shifter selecting DNR, custom analog EV gauges, ~50/50 weight balance, 440 electric horsepower, and provenance that includes a rust resurrection, a cross-country transplant, and a shop in Austin that had to invent parts of the process as it went.
There isn’t another one. You can’t option this car. You have to build it.
In 2022, this was a thought experiment. In 2023, it was a shell on a trailer. In April 2024, it was a mostly wired prototype on jack stands. In August 2024, it drove.
Call it sacrilege. Call it inevitable. Call it, if you like, the first EV 911 in New York. Eat your heart out Jerry Seinfeld.
Read more on Barry’s adventure here: https://ritholtz.com/2025/06/911-ev-update-10-months-in/
If you liked this story, you might like my book. Available on Amazon - Kindle or Paperback.
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