The Rally Fighter is the first open source vehicle ever successfully put into production by a group of creative commons designers from their online community. Over 90% of the parts come off the shelf, saving time and money on engineering, research, and development. It features a Chevrolet LS3 engine, a Ford 9-inch rear axle, King coil-over suspension, and a body designed by Sangho Kim - winner of the Local Motors design competition. It's a seriously fierce machine, and it was more than capable of propelling me at over 80 mph through 'whoops,' jumps, and anything that could be thrown at it on my little joyride. So how do you produce such an awesome vehicle? Naturally in a facility that is just as awesome.
The last time I toured an automobile factory, well, it wasn't that fun. Upon walking inside the building, I was told by a rather raspy sounding woman to put on a jacket that somewhat resembled a lab coat, an awkwardly sized hard hat, and some safety glasses that have been around since the 1960's. Needless to say, it was a bit uninspiring. Anything deemed important was delegated to an automated machine and people had very little interaction with actually even building the vehicle. Even though Local Motors is within two hours of where I live and I knew they built a pretty insane vehicle - I was initially a little bit hesitant of touring their facility. I kept thinking of those factory line workers snarling at me, wondering what I was doing intheir factory. It wasn't exactly something I wanted to spend my day doing again. Let's just say Local Motors completely rebounded my entire perception of car factories, and I'm pretty sure they have the coolest production car factory, ever.
From the moment I walked into the building and noticed I didn't have to pass through security, or get strip searched, I knew this was off to a great start. It was really just a bunch of car guys - much like myself, doing what they love for a living. You can tell pretty quickly after a short conversation that the people building these vehicles aren't what you'd expect at an car factory, most of them are smart - really smart, in fact, most of them are engineers, and they know what they're doing. The entire facility has a great feel to it, you have to want to work at Local Motors, and the friendliness of the staff really shows through into their work environment, which you could call, different to say the least.
More: http://www.expeditionportal.com/vehicules/58-other/898-local-motors-inside-the-factory-of-the-rally-fighter.html
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