A battered GM EV1 that turned up at a Georgia impound lot and sold at auction for more than $100,000 has sparked a restoration project that brought together a YouTube channel, a private collector, and ultimately General Motors itself. GM announced the news on March 11, 2026.
The car was VIN 212, one of the rarest surviving examples of the EV1, the first modern purpose-built electric vehicle from a major automaker. GM leased roughly 1,000 of them starting in late 1996, later recalled them, and left only a handful of non-drivable examples in museums and universities. VIN 212 slipped through the cracks.
Private enthusiast Billy Caruso purchased the car at auction, then teamed up with his father Big Mike, fellow enthusiasts Daren and Freddie Murrer, and Jared Pink, founder of Questionable Garage, a YouTube channel known for deep, engineering-forward restorations. The group had previously collaborated on a Chevrolet S-10 electric, a vehicle that shares drivetrain technology with the EV1. Together they launched Project V212 with a clear, ambitious goal: return VIN 212 to driving condition and public visibility by November 2026, the 30th anniversary of the EV1’s introduction.
(Image: GM)
When the team began publishing restoration videos, GM President Mark Reuss was watching. GM invited the Questionable Garage crew to its Global Technical Center in Warren, Michigan, where parts carefully pulled from a donor EV1 by GM’s design fabrication team were handed over. The visit included on-camera conversations with GM Heritage Center experts Adam King and Kevin Kirbitz, who walked the team through heritage vehicles that led to the EV1, including the Electrovair II, the Sunraycer solar race car, and the Impact concept.
GM technicians also showed off their own EV1 project, a recommissioning of a very special example, EV1 No. 1. The visit also featured a battery evolution walkthrough with Kurt Kelty and Andy Oury, two engineers helping to define GM’s EV future, and a cameo from Reuss, who escorted the crew across campus to collect their parts.
GM confirmed it is formally supporting the restoration as part of its recognition of the EV1’s 30th anniversary. The EV1 introduced technologies that remain foundational to modern EVs: heat pumps for climate and battery thermal management, blended regenerative and friction braking, fully by-wire controls, low-rolling-resistance tires, and an aluminum space frame chassis. As GM’s team put it: “EV1 set in motion everything we’re doing in electric right now.”
Today GM spans EVs across Chevrolet, GMC, and Cadillac, and is developing next-generation battery chemistries, expanding public charging infrastructure, and advancing V2H and V2G technologies that turn EVs into energy assets for homes and communities. The Questionable Garage team is continuing to document every step of Project V212 on YouTube, with more visits to GM facilities planned.
EVinfo.net’s Take: The Car That Started It All
Before electric vehicles became a serious industry, General Motors built the EV1. It was 1996, and no major automaker had ever done anything quite like it: a purpose-built, ground-up electric vehicle, not a conversion, not a concept, but a production car designed from the first bolt to run on electricity.
GM leased roughly 1,000 of them, mostly in California and Arizona, to a small and intensely devoted group of drivers. The EV1 was quick, quiet, aerodynamically radical, and packed with technology that the rest of the auto industry would not catch up to for decades. Engineers were essentially inventing the modern EV in real time.
Then GM recalled every last one of them and sent most to the crusher.
That decision, and the fury it sparked among EV1 lessees who fought to keep their cars, is the subject of Chris Paine’s 2006 documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car?” It is essential viewing for anyone interested in how the auto industry, oil companies, regulators, and consumer culture shaped the trajectory of electric transportation. Paine does not let anyone off the hook easily, and the film holds up as both a piece of investigative storytelling and a snapshot of an industry at a crossroads.
We are seeing the administration try the same tactics now in 2025 and 2026 to kill EVs, but EVs are now too widespread and too mainstream to be killed. The administration’s foolish actions will increase harmful smog, worsen air pollution, undermine climate progress, and cost drivers more money over time.
Five years later, Paine returned with “Revenge of the Electric Car,” following the early days of Tesla (before Elon Musk went crazy), the Nissan Leaf program, and GM’s development of the Volt as the industry reversed course and dove back into electrification. Where the first film is a eulogy of sorts, the second is a comeback story. Together they function as a two-part chronicle of one of the most consequential pivots in automotive history, and are essential viewing for any EV enthusiast.
The EV1 did not die without leaving something behind. The engineering lessons it generated compounded quietly over the years that followed. Now it stands as an important piece of automotive history. In January 2022, I wrote When the EV1 Was Killed, Plug In America was Born, one of EVinfo.net’s first articles.
EVinfo.net is glad Questionable Garage and GM are restoring VIN 212. We can’t wait to see it cruising America’s roads.
