All for one, one for all: Local Motors Rally Fighter

One of my favorite sayings is that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. Sometimes, a democratic approach to things is not necessarily the best way of maintaining a creative vision. Too many cooks spoil the broth, so to speak.

This philosophy is inherent in the world of luxury, and the automotive industry is no different – at least in the marketing department. I suppose there’s just something very alluring that I’m driving a car that was envisioned and handbuilt by one single designer, a completely uncompromised product all the way from the drawing table.

It is therefore very refreshing to read about the Rally Fighter from Local Motors, the self-professed next generation American car company. The car, the design of which is inspired by the classic P-51 Mustang fighter plan, to me mostly looks like a car that my 12 year old cousin would draw if he set out to create the coolest car ever.

And that just might be why I find the Rally Fighter so charming. It is nothing less than the very first crowd-sourced car, i.e. designed not so much by a company, but with a more open source approach: 35,000 different designs from 2,900 community members from over 100 countries were taken into consideration. Mr Ray Wert said it best in the original article:

For starters, Local Motors doesn’t even have a designer for their cars on staff. Each major system of the vehicle — whether it’s the exterior design, interior design or doors — heck, even the name — are developed in an open source development process. Once there’s enough support for any single design, Local Motors will develop it openly. That means members of the Local Motors community not only choose which designs are developed, but also, they get to help develop them. Contests are held for the development and the winner receives a monetary prize based on the importance of the system to developing the overall vehicle. Thus, door design might receive less money than say, exterior design.

A very intriguing concept. For more information on the Rally Fighter, check out Jalopnik. This quintessential camel will be priced at around $50,000.

Tags: crowdsourcing, local motors, rally fighter

This entry was posted on Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 4:54 pm and is filed under Cars. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.