Electric Eclectic – Darren Arthur of The 2CV Shop
By George Dyke….
I was in England in May and had an opportunity to visit with Darren Arthur, owner of The 2CV Shop near Warminster.
I first met Darren in 2022 during a 2CV voyage across the USA and Canada, where he, his son Jacob and Dave Myers drove a 2CV imported from England as a charitable means to raise awareness for the Kennedy’s Disease Association (KDA*).
I accompanied them in my 2CV for the Toronto, ON to Carlisle, PA portion on the trip.
At the time Darren told me of plans he had to offer electric 2CVs in England and extended an invitation to test drive one if I was able to stop by his shop.
On May 6, I ventured there in a rental Citroën C4 Aircross, (not the most impressive of Citroëns but that’s a whole other story). I arrived to a series of buildings in an old British army base just outside Warminster, three of which were occupied by Darren’s operation.
One shop housed the restoration portion where Mariusz Gawron was busy doing a rebuild of a 1962 2CV, a later 602cc 2CV and a Dyane. The 1962 was getting its floors replaced and brakes redone, but the exterior was being “preserved” to look like a barn find. The 602cc 2CV was a full refurbishment that included a new frame, engine, body and all the ancillary bits. The Dyane was going through the same process.
It was when I went to the second building that I realized that parts were not an issue. As the Club Cassis distributor for the UK, there is an impressive inventory of parts at hand. Everything from new body shells to multitudes of every nut and bolt needed to make a 2CV as good as new! Darren says that supplying parts has become a significant part of the business.
Brought up in Bristol in a truly working class family, (that’s where his accent comes from), Darren has put a passionate effort into establishing The 2CV Shop. As he tells it;
“Me and my brother were in the back of a Ford Escort van in the early days when I was about 5 and before my parents bought a house. We lived in a flat and they had a classic MGB. It wasn’t a classic at the time, it was scrap.
Later on when I was in my teens, my dad bought and old Jaguar. My dad was a jag man. He loved his jags, but I only knew them as not quite scrap yard jags but certainly approaching end of life.
Then when I was 16 when I met my wife Diane (she still my wife). I bought a Vauxhaul Cavalier when I passed the test she had a Metro. I was into cars obviously and we wanted to consolidate to just one car. At that time I was a builder in Bristol and owned my own company. I said well in my book the most reliable cars are the Morris Minor, VW Beetle and the 2CV. Now I didn’t want the Morris Minor, I wanted a convertible, but I could not afford a Beetle — even back then they were expensive, so we bought a 2CV, and it went from there.
I do everything in my life enthusiastically. We bought a 2CV in 1999, joined a 2CV club, went to some meetings and stuff. I can’t remember when it was, but when the national lottery came out in Britain where you pay a pound, buy a ticket and you’ve won seven million pounds, people would say in conversation — why don’t you buy a ticket, you win the grand prize? They said if they won they would buy a Ferrari, go on a cruise or fulfill some other dream. I did not do the lottery, so I have never won it and when they asked me, my answer was always — I think I’ll put the 2CV back in production.
Despite no lottery win, I decided to follow my passion. Its been good in one respect and bad in an other. When what you’re doing for a living is your passion, you never actually stop working. My hobby and my work are 2CVs. Even on holiday to the South of France with friends and my wife, I go looking for 2CVs.
We started in our first workshop here in 2008. All I had to start with is myself, and I had a deal with Club Cassis to be their distributor in the UK. Now it has turned out to be 6 staff members.
Even with a great staff I never stop working. In the evening, I edit the video footage I shoot during the day because we do a lot of promotion through YouTube.
Today half our business is split in part sales and the other half our work shop. Back when we started we probably had a stock of parts worth about £12.000. Now we have about £200.000 of parts in stock. All the parts stock is Club Cassis. We don’t buy from anyone one else. We are also now a distributor for Burton’s kit car in the UK based on the 2CV). Club Cassis didn’t have one and I always wanted to own as well as sell the Burton. Years ago, when they were separate companies, and Burton was Club Cassis’ main competition, that made it difficult, but now that they have joined forces, I am able to offer Burton.
Of course I was enticed with Darren’s effort to modernize the 2CV, a project he has embarked on with both the sedan and Truckette versions. The 2CV sedan is called 2cEv and the Truckette the Eive Van.
Both are equipped with electric power-plants, giving a range of 65 miles on a single charge that takes about 3.5 hours on a standard 13 amp 220 volt plug.
What was impressive is that I was the first person to drive the 2cEv this year (it was put away for the winter while Darren and Jacob went ice racing in a 2CV in France — (yet another story in Citroënvie) and it still held its charge from November!
The driving experience is, well – electric. I can understand why the car appeals to both new and older generations who want 2CV style but do not want to deal with shifting a manual gearbox or having to work on the maintenance aspects of an internal combustion gas engine.
The 2cEv is only 30kg heavier than a “regular” 2CV — a feat achieved by removing the fuel tank, spare tire (where the battery is now placed) and the engine. The 2CV gearbox is used but the clutch pedal serves only as a foot rest, nestled directly against the firewall. One simply pushes the gearshift toward the dashboard for reverse or pulls it towards to you for forward for drive. (Because you do not need the clutch, you cannot stall an electric motor and all your forward motion is in 3rd gear.)
Once you’re used this method of e-driving, you can reconnect the clutch and change from 3rd into 4th on the move if you want a bit more top end power. 1st gear is blocked off, you’ve got 2nd if you need it as well but that would only be for an incredibly steep, I mean seriously steep, hill.
For the Hotels and hire car companies, the car can be offered without a gearshift knob — just push buttons on the dash that you press – one for going forward, one for neutral and one for reverse, so you don’t have to learn the gear lever and of course the clutch is fixed to the firewall.
You have powerful acceleration and when you go down hill with your foot off the gas pedal, it will go into regen mode putting power back into the battery. It’s pretty much akin to driving any other EV but fortunately lacking all the “on screen technology” displayed in front of the driver. What you get is the visual charm of a 2CV but for those who want the original experience – the challenge of extracting all horsepower you can from it’s two-cylinder engine, arguably the heart of a 2CV’s character, that is noticeably lacking.
For EV haters that moan about range, Darren says;
“The best way to get more range is to drive it sensibly. If you find yourself getting low on power (I am not talking about 20% or 15% ,more like below 8%) and you still have some time before you get to your charge point then slow down. The slower you go the more range you will get and it makes a big difference. You will also find when you go down hill with your foot OFF the accelerator pedal then it will go into regen mode.
For today’s X-generation that basically want to point and drive, (let alone wanting to drive at all), and wish to look trendy around town, the 2cEv fills the need nicely. It is a bit pricey at £32.500.00 (A 3kw charger is an additional £1149.00 and a heated windscreen is £329.00), but not silly considering the cost/benefit of long term ownership. After all, it is a car that one could enjoy for the better part of a lifetime, especially since there seems to be a finite date approaching whereby internal combustion engine cars will be banned from roads.
Darren points out;
“It brings new people into the market. It brings a younger crowd in. What we certainly need to do to keep the 2CV alive. And also, since Club Cassis makes this electric kit, they need to invest into 2CV parts to make the electric vehicles. So they have more parts for the people that have petrol cars as well.
It’s a win-win situation. It’s not for everybody, but many 2CV owners don’t use their cars that often – they travel less than a thousand miles a year. And for those that do drive them frequently, the average miles in the UK is 38 miles a day.
As for expense, for sure it’s not cheap, but if you own a Ferrari Testarossa you can expect to pay £100.000.00 to convert it to electric.
There is also the appeal for aging drivers who have hip or knee issues that make driving a manual shift car impossible. Frankly, if you can operate a golf cart, the greatest challenge you will find is getting into and out of the vehicle. After all — it is still a 2CV body.”
There is the question of safety, though Darren notes that most of the people who buy the electric 2CV are 2CV owners.
“Petrol or electric, our biggest customer range are between 50 and 75 years old. A lot of them had a 2CV in the past, got one and want another one. They got one that they haven’t driven in 20 years, and they want to put it back on the road. That is our customer base. Some of them like to do it because we’ve already started doing electric conversion to the public. We delivered the first one back in February to Central London. Another one went to the countryside. He’s got quite a few 2CV’s and he says he just wants one to get in, drive to the shop, buy a pint of milk, go to the pub and go for a drive on Sunday.
The good thing about being electric is when you’ve got a petrol car and put it away for winter, the petrol goes off, it goes stale, So you are trying to start with this varnish in your tank. You’ve got to change oil. You may have oil leaks. Ultimately you’ve got to adjust the valves and change the spark plugs. Some classic car owners don’t want that fuss. They just want to drive the car.”
The 2cEv also has a small 12 volt battery under the hood. The reason it’s small is because you don’t have a starter motor to turn. When you turn the ignition on it takes power from the 12 volt battery and checks the high voltage system. Once the high voltage system has been checked and it’s ok, then two relays are opened for the cars operation. 12 volts is fed from the black box control module for lights, horn, windshield wiper motor the heater/de-mister and anything else do with 12 volts.
An e-Truckette
Darren has also significantly improved the 2CV Truckette that he has named the Eive Van. It encompasses a rear fibreglass kit that uses a 2CV frame and 2CV suspension. The reason The 2CV Shop went down that road is because original 2CV Truckettes are now hard to find and they are expensive. Why sacrifice an original?
Whether going electric or staying with gas engine power, The 2CV Shop version mates a fibreglass back section to a 2CV front at the B pillar. The result is a back section that won’t rot and nor will the galvanized frame underneath. The other advantage is that unlike the original Truckette where the seat travel is restricted because of the cargo floor area being raised, the Eive Van has a totally flat floor like the 2CV sedan, allowing full seat travel and even the means to fit a Burton seat rail extender kit — a huge plus for any driver over 6 feet tall.
One Eive Van on the lot was equipped with paraplegic controls and almost ready to be delivered to Channel 4 TV for a disabled reporter to use in the 2024 Summer Paralympics in Paris, France.
The Eive Van is extremely practical as a small delivery van in the city. Testing the range in London, Darren claims to have got got over 75 miles in central London.
“It took me a day and a half to do 75 miles in it. And if more range is needed an additional battery pack can be added and the rear suspension beefed-up.”
The 2CV Shop also offers a gas engine version of the van. Darren says;
“We are not tree huggers, we love petrol stuff as well. If you want to go across the continent buy a petrol 2CV. If you haven’t got a 2CV, come to us and we can buy a 2CV. We do what we call sales that are Grey on Grey. I only generally sell cars we have done in the past. I don’t scour the internet to find 2CVs to just to tart up and sell to customers because I don’t know if it’s been sprayed. Anybody can make a car look shiny but what’s underneath can be shocking. We sell those from approximately £18.000,00 to about £22.000,00.
If you have a 2CV and want to convert it to electric, the conversion price is about £17.000,00.
The Eive Van in electric form has a price of £39,950.00 plus VAT. If you want a petrol version you can take about £10.000,00 off the price.
The reason why the petrol van is not £17.000,00 cheaper than the electric one is because not only do they have to buy an engine, they have to purchase exhaust components, fuel tank, fuel line, fuel pump, etc… And because the car is right hand drive, they we had to develop a right hand drive wiring. Also, the French 2CVs only have one windscreen de-mister. In Britain, regulations require two, so an extra windscreen heater is added. The list a lot bigger than you may think.”
As well as running The 2CV Shop, Darren has become further involved with Kennedy’s Disease Association*. When the road trip for KDA was completed with the 2CV that he originally sold to them, Darren offered to buy back the car for £ 2,000.00 more than they purchased it. When Darren and Jacob went to pick it up in Dorset, an offer was made for him to become Trustee of KDA. As Darren puts it:
“I didn’t even know what a trustee was. They gave me and Jacob a trip of a lifetime in 2022. So I said let’s give a little bit back. I’ve never done it my life before, and I began to plan because obviously one of the jobs of a trustee is to partly run the charity and try and raise money. One way I have come up with is with a remote-controlled 2CV model that takes to local shows where he sets-up a little track and people can pay £2,00 a go for charity.”
Darren is planning to do a couple more Great Road Trips with the 2cEv (with enhanced exposure because of the green focus as well as having the benefit of being an iconic classic car). The present agenda is to do one trip from Italy to London in 2025 and another returning North America and doing the West Coast in 2026.
The show in Vancouver is the second weekend of September. So the plan is to ship the car over to LA. At this moment the route hasn’t been set.
“We’re not going to do what we did last time and go across America. We are going from Los Angeles to Irvine where the research centre is which is very important to Kennedy’s disease. We’re going to do a bit of Route 66, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas area, Santa Fe. There are really good people we stayed with last show. Then we’ll go to Pike’s Peak Colorado, I want to drive up Pike’s Peak, then we’ll bend round and head off to Vancouver. Follow the Salt Flats and up through the Rockies.
There are a few technical issues we have got to deal with for America; one is the range. We want to get a range of 150-200 miles out of the car. And the good thing is, if we go electric that get’s us into a large number of YouTube channels. The Tesla Community is big and they are lovely people. One the last North American Road Trip with a regular 2CV we were inundated with people saying “Oh come to our house, oh, come and stay with me. So I’m hoping, because we are going electric, the YouTubers in the community will react in the same manner.
And what we’re hoping is that we get hold of a Tesla Cybertruck or F-150 Lightning or Rivian pick-up truck. They have all got 3 kw supplies in the back. So I can charge a car, not on the go, but when we stop and it’s time to eat, we plug it into the back of the truck. Plus we need a support vehicle mainly to carry the other people in.”
Darren has come up with another very creative way to get the range they will need for the trip;
“We can add 2 or 3 battery packs in the back of the 2CV by removing the back seat. Recently I picked up some 2CV gear boxes. There’s me and I’m at 150-160 kg plus 200 kg of gearboxes in the back that went along with me, so I know, it can take that weight.”
Another option Darren mentioned is to go with a trailer connected to the 2cEv and put 3 battery packs in the trailer.
“When we run the trailer batteries flat we can put the trailer back onto the support vehicle and plug it into the 3 kw charger and you still have 60 miles to do in the 2cEv’s battery before you would have to charge it.”
That should get them through Death Valley and then some!
* Kennedy’s Disease (KD), known to the medical community as Spinal Bulbar Muscular Atrophy (SBMA), is a rare inherited neuromuscular disease that affects men of all ethnicities around the world.