09/21/2026
Long before electric cars became part of everyday conversation, a Trafford High School graduate found himself at the center of a moment that could have changed GM’s history. Edward P. Czapor, Trafford High Class of 1944, was General Manager of GM’s Delco Remy Division. After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh in 1948, he rose through the ranks at GM, eventually overseeing the divisions responsible for the electrical systems in millions of American vehicles. But there is one story that stands out, one we thought you might enjoy.
At a 1978 GM leadership meeting, Martin Caserio, a GM vice president, pointed directly at Edward Czapor and said: “Ed, of all the men here today, you should be most interested in the electric car program. Your division makes all the batteries for General Motors.” With that statement, the challenge was on.
Czapor returned to the Anderson, Indiana plant and encouraged his team to show Detroit just how capable Delco Remy’s engineers and pattern makers could be. Using plans from a Popular Science magazine and a collection of scrap parts, his team built a fully functioning electric car in just weeks. They named it DRIVE I (Delco Remy Investigative Vehicle Electric One).
On June 1, 1978, when Caserio’s plane arrived at the Indiana airport, Czapor drove the homemade electric car right up to the aircraft, gave the vice president a 55 mph ride down the runway, and demonstrated that Delco Remy was ready to lead GM into the electric era. Sadly, the project was scrapped. Despite Czapor’s effort, GM canceled this early electric car program, and DRIVE I was ordered destroyed within a week. Fourteen years later, GM introduced the EV1, but eventually recalled and crushed nearly all of them.
Edward Czapor’s effort to present GM with an electric vehicle option, through engineering ingenuity and the trust he placed in his people, may well be rooted in his early days in Trafford. His father, Frank, an immigrant from Poland, worked as a moulder in Trafford’s Westinghouse Foundry. Edward wrote in his 2002 book “People First” that he enjoyed visiting the foundry where his father worked. He said, “I could visualize myself doing a lot of jobs in the foundry.” He also wrote, “Popular Mechanics was a very important reading for me in my early teens. We had plenty of time to dream about what we wanted to be when we grew up.”
Edward Czapor’s story is a great reminder of what many of Trafford’s youth carried with them, growing up in such a productive community. He would eventually become one of the highest ranking engineering executives in all of General Motors, proof that the history of our past residents is not just local history, it is American history.
