Lightest possible heavy car?

All the following is hypothetical, I am not likely to ever build a Lemons car or an EV this expensive.

With all the talk of Lemons EV cars I have come up with a very generic game plan involving a sedan. I would take a heavy sedan or wagon that comes in a AWD variant. A leaf motor/controller combo would be used at each end to keep the motor and controller easy to cool and bulletproof and allow really aggressive regen.  The rear seat area would be used for the batteries. The batteries would be roughly 1000-1200lbs and should be able to be stacked in two layers. I would cut out the tunnel in the rear to make a flat floor and use a sliding rack to make the batteries removable from the side.  I think a heavy sedan would be a good starting point because heavy cars have lots of heavy stuff to remove and lots of interior space to shove batteries. You are then left with something heavy with brakes and suspension meant to handle the load. 

So the question is: What heavy sedan/wagon with AWD variants has the most weight that can be easily removed?

Sounds like what you want is a Ford [Taurus] PI sedan or a police Charger, yes?  A quick Googling comes back with 4522 lbs for the V8 AWD Charger (per a 2018 fleet brochure.) The corresponding Ford 2019 brochure is a 2-pager that doesn't give the weight (thanks for that) but Wikipedia quotes 4015 lbs for the 6th-gen Taurus.

Audi A4 or passat 4motion

I wonder if a wagon would let you slide the batteries in and out of the rear cargo area? Not sure how big a leaf drivetrain is, but I'm guessing too big to also have a battery pack on top of it.

What you want is an Audi A8. Lightweight aluminum chassis. They can be found cheap because well Audi V8. 

Any reason it needs to be AWD?  Couldn't you just put 2 motor / controller setups in mechanical parallel feeding the diff of something RWD?  I'd think that might keep things easier.  A big RWD will have plenty of room in back for the batteries along with plenty of rear suspension weight capacity.  Plus plenty of leftover weight capacity and space up front once the engine / trans are removed so you could put the motors up front with a driveshaft setup instead of having to shoehorn one motor into the back somewhere.  Having the motors up front might make the cooling system smaller / simpler / easier too. 

My S-class is 3500 raceweight with driver and there's a lot more weight I could pull out of it, probably get it down closer to 3200, with 800lbs+ of stock drivetrain.

rslifkin said:

Any reason it needs to be AWD?   

The AWD would allow me to use the regen in whatever bias I wanted front to rear to mimic balanced heavy braking. In a racing situation I could use levels of regen that would be obnoxious in a street car to get as much energy recovery as possible. It would also allow me to use the stock motors and inverters within reasonable limits which should help with longevity and efficiency. A transverse motor/trans combo at each end keeps the low parts of the middle of the car open for me to play with as well.  

T.J. said:

I wonder if a wagon would let you slide the batteries in and out of the rear cargo area? Not sure how big a leaf drivetrain is, but I'm guessing too big to also have a battery pack on top of it.

 

I was thinking about that as well. A leaf motor/controller stack with the charger bubble removed isn't very tall. Putting the battery that high in the car isn't what I would like for balance but I would probably have to put some of it up there anyway just for space reasons.

3000GT/Dodge Stealth? Very heavy for their size, but you would remove all of the heavy stuff for racing. If my Lemons Starion is an indicator, you can pull a lot of dead weight out of that car. You would be left with good suspension and braking systems, and lots of room for tire. 

Mercedes e-class.  Available in awd since the early 90s, in sedan and wagon variants, readily available for lemons money once used up by their 8th owners. Not too big, medium weight and good load carrying capacity, good suspension and brakes. 

Stampie said:

What you want is an Audi A8. Lightweight aluminum chassis. They can be found cheap because well Audi V8. 

There's some dirtbag who bought up all the cheap A8s within a 500mi radius of Indiana-ish so that he could scrap them.  Got an A8 with a bad trans that you're selling for $3k?  Within a couple weeks it would be recycled instead of a simple fix to keep an awesome car on the road.

And A8s were FRIGGIN AWESOME.  They weighed very little for a vehicle that you could probably play tennis in the back seat, flag football if you had an A8L.  The chassis dynamics did a stellar job of exploiting this, too - even though it did weigh relatively little (~4000lb?), they didn't hande like they had the wheelbase of a crew cab pickup.  Excellent steering feel.  Wonderful brakes (same brakes as the B5 S4, or vice-versa rather).

 - A8 fanboy

I second the A8. 

In reply to Knurled. :

Honestly, your summary describes the E38 7 series pretty well too.  V8 cars are in the ballpark of 4100 lbs (BMW's spec-ed curb weight includes a driver, so they're lighter than the specs make them sound).  Short wheelbase has lots of space, long wheelbase has even more.  And they do drive amazingly nicely for their size.  Sometimes I'm driving mine and start wondering why everyone is accelerating from stops so slowly and takes turns so slowly only to realize that they're not being slow, I'm just driving like a shiny happy person, yet the car doesn't even feel like I'm remotely pushing it. 

Of course, for this specific need, the A8 is a better pick due to having AWD. 

Stacked batteries. That thing is gonna catch fire and burn for weeks.