Enfield Automotive was an electric car maker set up on the Isle of Wight in the 1960s and owned by the Greek shipping millionaire Giannis Goulandris. Its first car, the 465 of 1969, was a small 2+2 prototype with a plastic body and no metal chassis; only about three were built.
The Enfield 8000, introduced in 1973, was designed by a team of Greek and British engineers led by Constantine Adraktas, with John Ackroyd, who later worked on Richard Noble’s Thrust 2 land speed record car, as project designer. It had an 8 bhp electric motor and lead-acid batteries, a square-tube ladder chassis with aluminium panels, Hillman Imp suspension, doors adapted from the Mini and a rear axle derived from Reliant three-wheelers. Top speed was around 48 mph and the claimed range about 40 miles, although Autocar managed 25 miles in its 1975 test.
Prototypes and early cars were built at the Somerton Works in Northwood, near Cowes, before Goulandris moved production to his Neorion shipyard company on the Greek island of Syros during the 1973 oil crisis. Accounts differ on how much was built in each place. In all 120 Enfield 8000s were made, 65 of them for the Electricity Council and the electricity boards of southern England, before the project was abandoned.
