Local Motors Rally Fighter History

The Rally Fighter was conceived via an online design competition in which community members submitted and voted on concepts; designer Sangho Kim's winning entry — inspired by the silhouette of a P-51 Mustang fighter plane — was selected in 2009 after 18 months of development, with customer deliveries beginning in 2010. It was the first car in the world to be developed entirely through this co-creation process.

Power came from a front-mid-mounted 6.2-litre GM LS3 V8 producing 430 hp and 424 lb-ft of torque, driving the rear wheels through a 4-speed GM 4L85-E automatic transmission. The fiberglass body kept weight low while 16 inches of front suspension travel and 20 inches at the rear gave it genuine desert-racing capability alongside street legality in all 50 US states.

Buyers assembled their own cars at Local Motors' microfactories alongside company technicians — a process that legally classified the vehicle as a kit or component car. Priced at just under $100,000, roughly 50 Rally Fighters were produced before the model was discontinued in 2016 as the company pivoted to autonomous electric vehicles. A subsequent investigation by The Autopian suggested the true build count may have been closer to 92 units. The same co-creation process was demonstrated for DARPA in 2011 when Local Motors ran a design competition and built the XC2V combat-support vehicle prototype — sharing the Rally Fighter's LS3 V8 and 4-speed automatic — to prove the method could compress a military vehicle from concept to reality in weeks rather than years.