Neighborhood Motors Shows Gathering Fighter at SEMA: A Fine Start, But…
This is the Rally Fighter, a kit car built by Local Motors, an upstart builder based in Massachusetts. Unlike most of the other custom-built cars at SEMA, the Rally Fighter was designed entirely through the use of crowd sourcing.
Through competitions on its Web site, Local Motors asked users to submit designs and let the community choose its favorite. The Rally Fighter came out on top, so Local Motors commissioned the build and used crowd sourcing for everything from the engineering to the materials.
It uses a BMW twin-turbo diesel power plant and various off-the-shelf parts to keep costs down. Local Motors says it plans to eventually build as many as 3,000 Rally Fighters and sell them for around $50,000 apiece.Other models are expected to follow, all chosen and designed by committee.
It's an interesting idea and the Rally Fighter looks to have turned out well. But to be clear, the Rally Fighter is not a car, and Local Motors is not a new kind of car company. At least not yet. Click through to find out why.
Although the Rally Fighter meets certain federal motor vehicle safety standards (FMVSS), owners will still be required to register it as a custom-built vehicle. This is easier in some states than others. California, for instance, only grants 500 custom vehicle registrations a year, and they're typically snapped up in a matter of days.
Even if owners manage to get their Rally Fighters registered, the vehicles will have none of the safety equipment found in your typical new car. No airbags, no energy-absorbing bumpers and no crash testing.
We asked a Local Motors spokesperson if this will change as the business ramps up. The answer was no. The company plans to build vehicles for niche segments only, so the volumes will never justify getting full federal certification. In other words, the company will avoid having to spend money on building all the things that make real cars expensive.
Don't get us wrong. The concept behind Local Motors is still a powerful one, but the idea that it will compete with the big OEMs in certain niche segments is ridiculous. Instead, it will simply compete with the dozens of other custom carbuilders that already exist, you know, like the ones that helped create SEMA in the first place.
Ed Hellwig, Lead
Local Motors
