Kit Cars

Back in the 1980's, before California DMV nerfed it all up, there was a subculture of people who built kit cars, using external designs that mimicked expensive or interesting designs. My Dad built a kit onto a 914 Porsche that was pretty looking and painted it red before selling it on after one too many scrapes on the high centers in Sonoma County roads. Some kit cars are really interesting designs, and many start with very cheap little cars underneath. The general deal is buy one with a bad body, cut off the bits you don't need, epoxy on the fiberglass kit, fill the holes, and cover it in nice paint, then build up the electricals and interior to your specification. Lots of cars on Top Gear are essentially this, using engine and chassis from something else. Lotus uses other people's engines, often Ford or Renault rebuilt and tuned for better horsepower. Most electric cars are kits where the engine is replaced with batteries and an electric motor or motors. Sometimes the gearbox and axles are removed to save weight.

The alternative to a kit car is an experimental vehicle, which is harder to get licensed as road legal, since DMV generally won't sign off without a VIN on the frame. You're usually better off starting with a wreck and cutting it apart, lighten and stiffen with tubes welded or bolted into place, and paint and interior how you like. The kit car treatment. This is not to say you can't build body panels from scratch, but you might end up with a slab sided ugly like the Top Gear Eagle iThrust. Probably not your best outcome.

There are kit conversions to change the exterior of a Mazda Miata to look more like a Fiat, for some reason, or an Alfa Romeo. As both those cars are unreliable junk, by reputation, having a Miata underneath sort of makes sense. How much does it cost to make those Italian convertibles reliable, though? Is it more than converting a Miata? I'm aware that the primary failing of British convertibles is the Lucas electrics, so replacing that and the wiring harness with modern electrics fixes them for the most part. I imagine this is less trouble than building a car from scratch, much less the hassles of dealing with Smog certification when the original car can ignore it since it qualifies as antique/collectors.

One of the reasons I bring up kit cars is that you can make them very light and thus get better mileage and performance. The primary problem with modern cars is they're too safe. Allow me to explain. Safety costs weight. Lots of weight. Hundreds of pounds of weight. The EU has many tiny fuel efficient cars. People ask me: "Why don't we have those great European cars here?". The answer is they won't meet our US crash safety standards. Many of those cars are efficient because they are very light and very fragile. A metal box to keep the rain off and something to bury you in when you get crushed into a crash. With American highway speeds being so high (85-90 mph), and American drivers busy texting on their smartphones and swerving everywhere to run over motorcycles and bicyclists and school children and old people in crosswalks, its small wonder that rather than actually enforce traffic laws, they just insist on heavier cars. Safer cars. That's a luxury we just can't afford anymore. With wages falling to Minimum Wage for College Graduates, when they can get a job at all, there's simply no income for expensive "safe" cars. This is why there's more scooters and mopeds on the road all the time. They're cheaper than cars, and easier to store/park, more efficient to run, and easier than pedaling for miles like a bicycle. If only Vespa sold for a reasonable price. If a Vespa was $900 a lot more people would have them.

I think that eventually national and state speed limits will drop so slow vehicles can use the roadways, including kit cars with small motorcycle engines. The original Fiat 500 had a 500cc engine, after all. Suppose you found an original one and replaced their engine with an old Honda 500cc engine, fixed up the body, paint, and interior and replaced the likely tattered ragtop. You'd have something pretty close and probably a little faster than the original. And just as unsafe, much like the Tata Nano, which won't pass US crash safety standards thanks to mandated airbags and crumple zones. The old VW bus won't pass crash safety either, same reason. They're still fun to drive, though.

Cute little kit cars are allowed to be slow because they look vintage so people don't mind as much. They drive past and stare at all the details that cars just don't have anymore. Wire wheels and chrome grill and bumper above. Cute and implying a degree of love for the vehicle rarely seen today. Normal people respect that sort of thing, and wouldn't you like a car that strangers walked up to you and complimented for how nice it is? I think this is the biggest upside to Hot Rod guys because they talk to each other, and Vintage/Rods get different sorts of conversations and respect that modern bubble cars miss due to simply being utility vehicles. Bubble cars are fast and efficient and comfortable, but they're no Austin Healey. I would love for Californians, and former Detroit car builders, to start building kit cars like these, full time, and selling them to compete with the current batch of uninspiring product from Detroit today. We'll likely be waiting for a new president so the economy supports buying cars again, but I could easily see a kit car based on a rolled/wrecked Subaru Impreza cut down to look like a Mini Cooper. Or a Geo Metro with the body of a fiberglass/carbon-fiber Fiat or Holden. That's a Triumph triple motorcycle engine under that. In a light vehicle with independent wishbone suspension it should be fast. I know that when I used to deliver newspapers 20 years ago, I removed the passenger and back seats from my car and losing those 200 pounds make it zip when I popped the clutch. Lots of little cars out there begging to have the weight stripped out and turned into something light and therefore fast or fuel efficient, depending how you drive. Top Gear sometimes plays with this idea.

Little Oliver, a cheap and cheerful little car from the days of poverty when the coal mines were closing and the USSR was threatening to nuke us all if only the wind wouldn't blow the fallout back to them, that's the sort of charming little box we might see in the future. Its very light, very simple, easy to maintain, and a very old style. Its not fast. It doesn't really need to be. Road speeds were 55 back then. If road speeds were 55 again, drag from aerodynamics is considerably less important. Kit cars can be built based on looks rather than drag coefficients. Why not? Its not like the job that's 60 miles away pays better than the one 30 miles away. That's the world we live in today. If we're all making minimum wage, why go so far to work? Why spend all that money on gas? Why rush?