Shiny black and with its classic – if a little dumpy – lines, chrome bumper and gleaming wing mirrors, Wayne Campbell’s Morris Minor glides extremely quietly through the doors of his Glenrothes garage.

Built in a year of petrol rationing due to the Suez crisis, when tales of Russian spies gripped the nation, and the Ecurie Ecosse team took the chequered flag at Le Mans, the 803cc model has aged remarkably well since it rolled off the production line exactly 65 years ago.

Since 1956 it’s clocked up tens of thousands of miles – but exactly how many is hard to tell, as there are only five digits on the mileometer. And yet as it sets off, there’s not even the slightest puff of exhaust to be seen belching from its back end.

Classic car on the outside, under the bonnet the Morris Minor has undergone an electrifying revamp to bring it up to speed for a new, greener age.

Having converted the classic car from petrol to electric battery – and upped its top speed from 40mph to 70mph in the process – Wayne and son Euan are now tearing out the environmentally unfriendly innards of a 1969 T2 VW Campervan.

Eventually, it will be fitted with a very modern 75kW Tesla battery pack and Tesla Drive Unit, giving it a range of up to 250 miles and turning it from gas guzzler and emission heavy to a clean machine.

For some fans of classic cars, ripping out roaring petrol engines in favour of deathly silent electric, is nothing short of sacrilege.

Yet for what appears to be an increasing number of classic car enthusiasts, swapping the unreliability of a well-used combustion engine for a thoroughly modern alternative under the bonnet, is the only way to travel.

Wayne’s Electron Garage in Fife is believed to be the only one of its kind in Scotland currently converting classic vehicles to electric.

However, a handful of specialist garages have already sprouted in England and Wales, and turned classic cars like Triumph Stags, Porsche 356 Coupes, E-type Jaguars, VW Beetles, Campervans and Morgans – and even one ‘Back to the Future’ DeLorean – into all-electric vehicles.

Celebrities have already led the way: singer Ellie Goulding rolled up to her 2019 wedding in a VW Campervan which had been converted to use a Tesla engine and battery, and Slumdog Millionaire actor Dev Patel had his Fiat 500 converted to electric.

While the Duke and Duchess of Sussex drove into their wedding reception in a £350,000 converted 50-year-old E-Type Jaguar.

Wayne concedes not everyone is a fan of tinkering with classics. But as more classics are converted, the more we are likely to see vehicles from days gone by on our roads.

“There are two camps out there,” says Wayne. “One says we shouldn’t do this to a classic vehicle – and there are some cars we would not want to touch.

“But there are also a lot of classic cars sitting in garages and barns that don’t turn a wheel from year to year because they are difficult cars to live with.

“With a lot of older cars, you need a toolkit with you whenever you go for a drive. They break down and you’re left at the side of the road.

“Electrifying it gives it a new lease of life, and helps it keep going for another 20 or 30 years. You can drive it without worrying about it getting you to where you want to go.”

Government plans to crackdown on heavy emission diesel and petrol cars, plus the prospect of low emission zones in city centres is driving some owners to rethink how they power their classic car in the future.

While the combination of eco-conscious millennials with a hankering for retro design, and older ‘petrolheads’ seeking to revisit the cars of their youth and, perhaps reluctantly, accepting their emissions are less than friendly, are also said to be fuelling the trend.

In the case of the Morris Minor, the engine, fuel tank and various other original components were removed and replaced by an electric engine and 24Kw battery packs from a Nissan Leaf written off by insurers following a smash.

Inserting the new technology into the old car was far from straight-forward, with parts salvaged from other cars and even a motorbike used to help merge the old with new.

The sheer challenge of trying to squeeze the new components into a tiny engine and boot space was tricky: in the end not all of the battery pack would fit.

It means the range is limited to only around 70 miles – but, adds Wayne, enough for a city car.

At Car Cave Scotland in Bonnyrigg, Midlothian, Alan Potts specialises in selling classic cars to enthusiasts – and business is booming.

Few, he thinks, would want to trade the roar of a classic engine for the soft whirr of an electric motor.

“The general consensus of opinion among classic car guys is that you’d be ruining your classic car,” he says.

“If you have a Morris Minor or an MG Mgb Gt that’s worth maybe £5000 to £10,000 and you then convert it, you’ll affect the value of the car a little but not massively.

“But convert an E-type Jaguar to electric and you’ll really affect the value of the car.

“And with some old cars like, say, an Aston Martin, the noise they make is everything,” he continues. “To switch on the engine and all of a sudden there’s a whizzing noise … it kicks the guts out of the car a little bit.”

But electric is the future: the Scottish Government has set a target of 2030 to phase out the need for new petrol and diesel cars and vans, as part of its ambitions to slash emissions by 75% by 2030, and to net-zero by 2045.

It has also introduced subsidies to help motorists purchase electric vehicles, tax relief for drivers of low-emission vehicles and invested £20.6 million in supporting the uptake of electric vehicles.

Nevertheless, Alan says demand for retro petrol classics – particularly old favourites of the Seventies and Eighties which he imports from South Africa - is soaring.

“There is massive demand,” he says. “We shift about 20 classic Fords every month; if we had more of certain models, we’d shift even more.

“Most popular are Escort Mark 1 and 2, Capris, Cortinas. Then there’s the generation that wants XR3s and XRS Turbos which are quite popular.

“People want the car they wanted when they were young - there are a lot of guys aged 30 and 40 who are buying cars they remember they father drove.

“In the case of the Ford Granada, guys used to banger race them and destroy them. Now they are getting nostalgic for these old cars.

“Yes, the emissions for some are quite horrendous, but they’re not on the road that much,” adds Alan, who sells cars across the UK, and often exports to countries as far afield as Canada, the Czech Republic and even New Zealand.

“I like old cars,” he adds, “I like to go home with oily hands. If you put an electric engine in, you’re ripping the heart of them. “ In Glenrothes, the VW Campervan is undergoing its £50,000 conversion to electric. “We’ve had a lot of enquiries, including for an old Land Rover to be converted,” Wayne adds.

“People have taken cars and customised them for years – it’s no different.

“I think interest in converting classic cars to electric will grow as people become more aware of what can be done.”