Ok, the engineer in me has officially decreed this to be the coolest thing I have ever seen. The short story?
Local Motors announces a competition to design a car to meet a certain set of requirements.
People from around the world design up cars, and submit them to the competition.
People from around the world vote on the designs.
The design with the most vote wins.
Local Motors then produces that car.
But it gets even better than that – you help them build it.
Every car Local Motors sells will go straight to an end recipient – no dealerships, no middlemen, no car lots. That end recipient gets called up when it comes time for his car to be built, heads up to their headquarters in Wareham, MA, and then he and one of the Local Motors’ technicians build his car in six days – two long weekends.
And what about the car? Well, take a look for yourself: 3L, turbocharged, 6-speed manual, 265hp, 425lbft, RWD engine; 30-36 mpg; curb weight of 3000 lbs in an 69in h x 80in w x 189in l package; seats for four; adjustable suspension depending on whether you are tackling drag strips or dirt; and some pretty bad-arse styling.
Sure, the car is currently projected to cost somewhere around $50,000, and that is bound to only go up, but consider what you are getting at that price: effectively a custom, one-off car built specifically for you; a technician to help you build that car for six whole days; and the ability to actually build the car yourself – a car that can probably do a fair number of things that other $50k cars cannot quite manage.
Yeah, this is a brand-spanking new company, with a brand-spanking new idea. But that is how everything starts. Check out Local Motor’s FAQ, and go from there. All I can say is that, as an engineer, I am simply amazed that today, just over a hundred years after the first, affordable, mass-produced car rolled off its line, we can literally take the brainchild of a designer – any designer – and transform it into reality, at a price that is expensive, but hardly unattainable.
LEGOs have not only grown up, they are real.
automobile auroring | really screwed up estate | eeny, meeny, and miney (moe missed the train) |
Shit that’s in my Backyard. I’ll note that if any Walls of the City readers want delivery, I’ll deliver ANY of these cars to wherever in the United States you live and all I ask is you cover my food, hotel, and return flight/rental car/mas transit return.
Tell you what – if I can ever afford something from their factory up there (though I hear they will be expanding to other mini-factories in the future), I will stop by on my way back home and le tyou take it for a spin around the block
.
not exactly a show-off
This video would have been a lot more impressive if the Rally Fighter was actually one of the cars tearing up the dirt, rather than simply sitting on the sidelines, having the dirt obsessively wiped off it……