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The Rally Fighter is the first automobile manufactured by Local Motors. The car is designed under CC-BY-NC-SA license. It was featured in an episode of the American version of the television show Top Gear. The Rally Fighter was also featured on the Discovery Channel television show Game Changers showing the build process that customers who purchase a Rally Fighter would go through. The Rally Fighter is an automobile built by the customer at a Micro Factory owned and operated by Local Motors. While at Harvard, ex-Marine Jay Rogers formulated a business plan to harness the creativity of the world's underemployed car designers. The idea won the school's annual business-plan contest and soon after, Rogers formed Local Motors to put it to the test. The company held contests wherein designers submitted sketches that were voted on by the online community. Instead of one designer giving a few options, the worldwide mob provided over 10,000 cars, and the coolest ones rose. That's how a student at the Art Center College of Design, Sangho Kim, turned the fever dream of an off-road P-51 Mustang fighter plane into a rolling reality called the Rally Fighter. The car employs a steel-tube frame, composite bodywork and two available engines—a BMW twin-turbo diesel from a Chevy LS3 small-block V8. The V8 is not as novel as the BMW oil-burner, but has the advantage of 50-state emissions compliance. And 430 hp, to the BMW's 265. Rogers says the diesel could still be available for someone who wants it, but right now the momentum is with the V8 powertrain. The Rally Fighter won't be for everyone. And not just because of its design and the process that led to it—obviously, there aren't many other crowd-sourced, warplane-inspired desert racers on the road—but for the niche it occupies in the automotive firmament. The Rally Fighter is, in its way, sort of like an off-road, American version of a Lotus—a car that's rare but attainable for mortals, built by a small, focused company of gearheads. _____________ Music: "Slammin' (Stinger)", "Nuclear Fusion (Pad)" Composers: Chris Martyn/Geoff Harvey http://www.purple-planet.com Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/