A one-of-a-kind hybrid vehicle is the cause of a recent fire at a San Francisco warehouse that stored Neil Young’s musical equipment, memorabilia and more. Belmont-San Carlos Fire Marshal Jim Palisi said that the three-alarm blaze began in Young’s 1959 Lincoln Continental, called LincVolt because it runs on electric batteries and a biodiesel-powered generator.
Young famously hired workers to turn the Continental into a hybrid vehicle and documented the process in a four-part film series in 2008. In a statement, the Canadian rocker said the problem with LincVolt seems “
to be an operator error that occurred in an untested part of the charging system.” The car’s computer was recovered from the fire and might provide more information.
The fire did more than $1 million worth of damage to Young’s items and the 10,000 square-foot building they were housed in. Young praised firefighters, who prevented the destruction of 70 percent of the contents, including five other classic cars. “A lot of archival items were threatened and the fire department did a first-class job protecting them,” he said.
Thanks for the report to Bryan Wawzenek, Gibson.com.
