I've been doing some thinking on this, and I've learned how hard it is to find weight comparisons of various cars.
There's a guy here whose name escapes me right now that likes the VW pickup of the early-to-mid 80s. What I liked (and remember) is that he'd done several of them, and he used a clothes dryer plug and a big honkin' diode for a charger. It sounded mostly like breathing new life into a beater car, and using it to whirr (I was going to say "putt") around town on the cheap.
I used to have an '81 Jetta, and I had it weighed once. It was 1990 lbs with me in the driver's seat and half a tank of gas. That meant that empty, the car was under 1800! Does that sound a bit light to anyone else here? I mean, I know it was a light car, and it went plenty fast with an 80HP gas engine, but ????? I don't know how sturdy it would be for an EV conversion, and unfortunatly, they corroded pretty badly and few survive today.
I'm very interested in hearing others' experience with the weight vs strength (and therefore, suitability) of various existing car platforms for EV conversion. I've only done gokarts so far, but I've managed to learn a little. Unless you have piles of money, you'll probably wind up using SLA batteries or some related variant for power, so there's a big weight issue. Even if you do have piles of money, the batteries are bound to represent a lot of weight.
Veering back closer to on-topic, however, I'd have to say that I like the Lotus Elise form that Tesla uses. In the slightly more affordable realm, I really like the Smart Roadster, and to a lesser extent the Smart Car, but I don't know if they have the needed "beef". They're also very rare and expensive here in the US. Locally, I'd have to say I like some of the Scion stuff, although the Shoe Box (XB) isn't my cup of tea. I've noticed that old Datsun 1200 cars are pretty rare, despite their proliferation "back in the day" - perhaps this is inspired by Plasma Boy and the (in)famous White Zombie. I have to admit that if I found a 1200 in decent condition (aside from the motor, which I don't want), I'd probably snap it right up.
-Mark