Owners of fossil fuel-guzzling classic cars who are in despair over the inevitable move to electric vehicles needn’t throw away their car keys and their furry dice just yet. Help is at hand.

How so?

Put simply, just because an internal combustion engine came as standard in 1959 when your brick red Austin-Healey 100-6 BN4 rolled off the production line, it doesn’t mean it has to stay that way. Just as you might swap a radio-cassette for a CD player and then upgrade to a whizz-bang Bluetooth sound system, so it goes with engines. Only on a bigger scale.

Bigger sounds tricky ...

It isn’t particularly. Using parts salvaged from electric vehicles (EVs) such as Teslas and Nissan Leafs which have been written off by insurers after some kind of prang, a growing number of enthusiastic mechanics and forward-thinking business types are offering a service converting classic vehicles to electric power. It can take up to six months, depending on the availability of parts and the customer’s requirements, but it’s worth it. Companies such as London Electric Cars, Electron Garage (based in Glenrothes) and Oxford’s Electrogenic all offer the service for cars both non-classic and classic (or historic as the Department of Transport terms anything registered before 1981). London Electric Cars, run by one Matthew Quitter, is currently converting all Land Rovers used by the organisers of the Glastonbury Festival to run on electric power.

Expensive?

At the moment it is a little on the steep side. The cost for converting a classic car can be as much as £20,000. But as with everything EV-related, the cost will come down. The UK government currently offers grants of £2500 for anyone wanting to buy an electric car, but the Department of Transport says it is looking into the idea of retrofitting old vehicles with electric motors. Presumably grants will follow. For Mr Quitter, it’s a battery-powered no-brainer. “It’s a disaster to waste the millions of old cars on our roads, and the government’s EV rebates are encouraging scrappage,” Mr Quitter told the BBC. “The government needs to offer affordable conversions on cheap old cars, to make use of the scrapped EV batteries which have raw materials that are still sky-rocketing in price.”

Why bother?

Well, there’s the small matter of the UK government’s proposal to stop the sale of petrol- and diesel-driven cars by 2030, which effectively spells the end of the road (sorry) for the petrol-driven internal combustion engine. Oh, and there’s the not so small matter of the imminent threat of environmental disaster as well.

What do classic car owners say?

Like their cars, many remain unconverted. The stylish good looks of a decades old classic car is a large part of its appeal, but don’t underestimate the thrill they feel when they gun the motor and the engine rumbles. If there’s one thing an electric vehicle doesn’t do, it’s growl like a pure-breed Jack Russell terrier.