It’ll only get you around the track once, but for a singular experience at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway it would be tough to beat.
A 1985 Lola T900 race car converted to run on batteries is up for sale this weekend at the Auctions America event in Auburn, Indiana. The Brawner Hawk EX-11 was built as an experimental vehicle by Tony Brawner and current owner Billy Roe in 1992 to the tune of about $1 million dollars in sponsorship from Motorola, Arizona Public Service and Exide Batteries.
The open wheel single-seater is powered by a 180-volt motor from General Electric that gets its juice from a set of 16 old tech 12-volt led acid batteries located in the car’s side pods. According to Roe, there’s enough charge to complete just one lap of the 2.5-mile track at full throttle, or closer to five at highway speed.
Although it has taken part in a number of alternative energy racing events over the years, in 2011 it set a battery-powered track record at Indy of 106.897 mph. That’s just short of the car’s overall top speed mark of 107.16 mph, which it hit 20 years ago at the Phoenix mile.
The car has a pre-sale estimate of between $100,000 and $140,000 and is currently festooned with the words “Drill Baby Drill” on its sides, though it probably has more in common with the kind that dentists use than the ones up in Alaska.