Sitting in his spacious office, under the watchful stare of a giant pterodactyl head mounted on the wall behind his desk, Paul MacCready is recounting the virtues of his 1988 Buick LeSabre. It’s reliable, it has good acceleration, and it’s reasonably comfortable, he says in his rumbly monotone. It gets me from point A to point B.
To those who know him, such a glowingly practical assessment of what is--let’s face it--a pretty ordinary car would hardly be surprising. MacCready is, after all, a Caltech-trained engineer with zero tolerance for useless frills. He is also a straight-arrow businessman who founded two modestly successful technical companies, as well as a guy who enjoys stopping at the Caltech faculty club on the way to his corporate digs at seven in the morning (after having already put in two hours of work at home) for a bowl of All-Bran.
But how to explain the whimsy of his prehistoric officemate, the pterodactyl? No problem. That’s the handiwork of another MacCready who happens to inhabit the same body: the sky’s-the-limit inventor who parlayed a preternatural talent with model planes into Da Vinci-like human- and solar-powered vehicles that shattered the world’s notion of the limitations of such machines, the passionate naturalist who gets teary-eyed talking about the monarch butterfly and the sooty tern, the easygoing fellow who accessorizes his blazer, tie, and gray slacks outfit with black sneakers.
This 65-year-old walking study in contrasts has now pulled off the biggest contradiction of all. Tapping the sponsorship of none other than lumbering, financially troubled General Motors and blending it with the skills of some of the most innovative, daring engineers in the vehicle business, MacCready has driven his small company to design and build a car that many observers think will make the biggest splash since the ’65 Mustang, and maybe even since the Model T. It’s fast, it’s sexy, and it’s being rushed into mass production. Oh, by the way--it’s powered by batteries.
Words like fast and sexy generally aren’t issued in the same breath as electric car, except perhaps to describe what electric cars aren’t. But the unveiling of the GM Impact prototype in 1990 demolished such conventions. This flashy two-seater not only outclasses the Mazda Miata in the curves of its body but on asphalt curves as well, accelerating from 0 to 60 in 7.9 seconds, with a top speed of 110 mph. And it goes 120 miles on an eight-hour charge that costs a little more than a gallon of gas--double the range of most electric-powered competitors, and eminently suitable for the Impact’s intended use as an urban-suburban commuting vehicle.
