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While we spend a lot of time focusing on the goings-on involving major automakers, America is home to a number of small in-house shops and kit car makers who employ thousands of people and build exceptional products. One of the most interesting “kit” cars on the market today is the Local Motors Rally Fighter – part race car, part off-road beast, and fully street legal.
The big draw of the Rally Fighter, unlike so many other kit cars, is that you build it yourself from parts that are easily found on other vehicles. Autoblog reports that in order to showcase how easy it is to build one of these cars, Local Motors will be building one of their famed Rally Fighters in front of a live audience at the International Manufacturing Technology Show in Chicago next week.
Usually, the $50,000 Rally Fighter is built and assembled at the Local Motors “micro-factory” in Arizona, where trained technicians help buyers put their cars together. The Rally Fighter utilizes components from a number of different vehicles that are easily accessible, including a 6.2 liter LS3 V8 engine from GM. This helps keep costs down, as well as making the Rally Fighter a terror on the track, or off of it.
For Local Motors to put together a Rally Fighter at the IMTS show is a great idea, as this is a place where manufacturing executives the world over come to talk shop. That is why, instead of driving a Rally Fighter to the show, Local Motors is shipping it up in the boxes you see above. Kind of cool, right? Maybe GM will catch on and build an all-new Corvette at the next SEMA show.
