- This is Collin, he's 17,
and he's building a project car from scratch in his garage.
To any of you who have put time into a project car,
this might sound like a tall order.
It's tough for a first-timer
cause no matter how common a chassis is
or how straightforward a build might be,
no matter how many forms you go on
or how many YouTube tutorials you find,
you always get stuck because there's never
an instruction manual for your exact build.
But what if there was?
What if you had a step-by-step guide
to get from a pile of parts to a running project car?
(car engine roaring)
That's what Colin has cause he got a kit car.
If you're thinking that I'm talking about some Fiero-based
fiberglass, Ferrari knockoff
then you're missing out on what kit cars are today.
We talked to all kinds of builders and owners
to get the low down on what it takes
to build a modern kit car.
So whether you're an experienced builder or a newbie,
a classic car-lover or a track rat
looking for the best power-to-weight ratio,
I guarantee by the end of this video,
you'll be looking for a kit car
of your own.
(upbeat music)
Big thanks to Raycon for sponsoring this episode.
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Now let's get back to Wheelhouse.
(beep)
Before researching this video the term kit car,
for me at least, was a four-letter word.
(beep)
Kit cars have a stigma of being machines
built to look like a super car or another rare car
but was actually a slower, cheaper car underneath.
And for a long time, that was the case.
These are the pretender cars,
designed and built with aspirational views.
I've since learned that there's
a few other types of kit cars,
but let me build to that.
The idea of a kit car actually blossomed in the 1950s.
With rust-proofing in its infancy
many older vehicles were getting scrapped
because their body work was beyond repair.
So people figured why not get a new, lighter fiberglass body
and slap it on as a replacement.
It wasn't just a way to make the car look faster or cooler.
It gave a chassis a second life.
By the 70's however, small manufacturers
wanting to get into the auto business
had found that selling a car as a kit
was a great way to get your foot in the door.
In the UK, kits were seen as components, not new vehicles
so they could be sold without imposing the purchase tax
which was an extra 33% tax on luxury goods
in the UK until 1973.
Since kit cars weren't considered luxury goods,
all you needed was a donor vehicle
and there was no car that was better suited
to being a card-carrying donor than the Beetle.
The Beetle was cheap, mechanically simple,
and had an unusually sporty layout
with the engine sitting on the rear axle,
driving the back wheels.
Also by that time, VW had sold over 15 million
of these suckers.
So donor chassis and any repair parts were plentiful.
Cars like the Bradley GT, Aquila GT,
and the original Dune buggy, the Meyers Manx
were all the result of builders catching the Bug bug.
Also, rest in peace to Bruce Myers,
passed away very recently.
The Beetle wasn't the only solid base for a kit car.
The Fiero was a two-seater, mid-engine,
rear-wheel drive coupe,
and one of the only times the US has ever made
a midship car that was this cheap and popular.
The V6 Fiero GT was being called the poor man's Ferrari
and if it's already being called a Ferrari
for what's on the inside,
why not make the outside match as well?
Since the Fiero was built on a space frame chassis
covered with plastic body panels,
it was easy to pull off the original ones
and slap on new fiberglass ones.
Because of this, it was super easy to build
a Faux-rarri
a sham-borghini or,
a poor-sche.
Guys, if you love my hilarious car-based jokes,
check me out at Chortle Fest in Montreal this summer.
I'll be doing a tight five every night of the festival.
Many Fiero-based kits landed somewhere in
the uncanny valley of aesthetics.
Think of that car drawing you did when you're 12
and your mom was nice enough to put it on the fridge.
It's got all the details
but the proportions are just a little off.
This is what most people imagine
when they think of kit cars.
Even though the Fiero made this type of build accessible,
it actually backfired because so many
poorly-constructed kits and unfinished builds
gave the words kit cars a bad reputation.
(beep)
Instead of being a serious build
it was viewed as a car cosplay.
But surprisingly some kits
were actually designed pretty damn well.
The Pontiac Mera was a Fiero GT kit
designed to replicate the Ferrari 308,
and it was so accurate and so popular
that Ferrari actually sued Mera over the styling.
Regardless, the Fiero was a great blank canvas,
and even though the Fieros were prone
to catching on fire some of the time,
that's still about the same reliability you could expect
from a real 80s Ferrari in the first place.
So, fair play.
So kit cars were all about building a car
that looked like a car you actually wanted,
but couldn't afford.
And this is where kit cars started to change a little bit.
If you could make a car
that looked like it was expensive to buy,
why not make something that looked
like it was impossible to buy?
(upbeat music)
If you've ever seen Ford GT 40 at a car show
or a cars and coffee, I can almost guarantee
that it wasn't an actual GT 40,
I'm sorry.
That picture you sent to your grandma?
It was a lie.
Since the legendary Lamar wins of the 1960s,
the tiny Ferrari killer has been a dream car
for many people in the US
but getting an actual GT 40 is a tall order,
since less than 100 of them were built
and they regularly sell at auction
for as much as $10 million.
So plenty of companies started making kits.
Almost 20 companies have offered some version of a GT 40.
All of a sudden, this car went from way out of reach
to a legitimate possibility.
And because of the kits for such a rare, expensive,
and storied cars were available,
you actually see the GT 40 randomly pop up in movies.
You got Velvet Buzzsaw, The Man From Uncle, John Wick,
The Punisher, Crazy Rich Asians, Fast Five,
just to name a few.
All those GT 40s, and Ford vs Ferrari,
those were kit cars that you could build yourself as well.
Factory Five Racing, who became famous
for their AC Cobra replicas,
started producing a Shelby Daytona coupe replica
that can be built with the 5.0 liter coyote engine
or a 351 Windsor.
Unlike the Fieros and Bugs of old,
these kits were not about being economical.
While it is definitely cheaper to get a kit Daytona
than an actual Daytona,
these builds are about experiencing a classic car
with all the heritage and pedigree that comes with it
without the risk of breaking a priceless classic.
Cause honestly, I'd hate to get into a legendary race car
and have to baby it for insurance reasons
or something like that.
But with these kit cars you can actually drive them
and drive them hard.
And with modern engines and modern parts,
you can get a faster, more reliable, more comfortable
and more economical car than the original.
But as much as I love older American cars,
these kits all feel
a bit boomer-y, right?
They feed off the nostalgia for an era I wasn't around for.
They aren't exactly cheap either.
But there's a another type of kit car.
The kind that is designed to be
the best lap time per dollar investment
and if you are a semi-skilled builder,
you could have a car that is lighter, faster,
and easier to work on than the Money Pit Miata,
while still being cheaper.
Let's look at some track-ready kit cars.
Have they become a viable option for car guys like me
that are limited on budget and skill?
In my case, definitely skill.
You might've seen some stripped-down, tube chassis'd,
minimalist carts like Hoonigan's Shark Cart
or Leroy the Savage.
The idea is that you take off as much of the car
as you possibly can, give it a stiff tubular cage
and make the car as light as possible.
Even though the idea of track carts
has gotten bigger in recent years, it's an old concept.
Lotus offered a stripped down, track-minded kit car
as early as 1957.
The Lotus seven was an open-wheel two seater
that could be bought from the factory
as a completed car or as a slightly cheaper kit.
It's light weight made it a chuckable little track wagon.
Try saying that five times fast.
And the formula has barely changed.
In 1974 the production of the Lotus seven
was taken over by Caterham.
And today Caterham is a fully fledged manufacturer
that still sells kits based on the Lotus seven design.
If you're looking for something a little more
of this century, kit cars have still got you covered,
and these might be some of the best
bang for your buck options out there.
Seriously, check this out.
To keep costs down and parts easy to source
the donor car idea hasn't gone away.
Take a look at the DF Goblin.
James talked about this a few weeks ago.
It uses a Chevy Cobalt as a donor
and it turns it into a mid engine,
open-wheel, lightweight monster.
The average build ends up being under 1600 pounds
which is almost half the weight as the original car.
The kit is also designed to be
as straightforward a build as possible.
There's no welding and no metal cutting required.
If you're being particularly thrifty
you could build this thing
and get it on the road for under $10,000
and that includes all the tools you need,
but like you'd really have to like plan it out.
I would not expect that to be the norm, okay?
If you built this with the supercharged Cobalt SS
as your donor, you'd have a Chevy with
a better power-to-weight ratio than the Z51 Corvette,
and it would also be mid-engine.
That's right, you heard me.
These things relocate the engine for the most fun possible.
It does actually sound pretty sick.
I want to drive Justin's car now.
The Factory Five 818 uses a 2000 Subaru Impreza
as the donor, the engine, trans, suspension
and brakes from the Subaru get dropped into the 818
for a mid engine to rear wheel drive car.
You basically got a Porsche Cayman that can be finished for
under 15K or at least that's what the brochure says.
Can these cars really be built for as cheap as they say?
How good of a builder do you actually need to be?
What about the hidden costs like tools, paint
and other specialty processes?
We've been building the hype pretty hard
but now it's time for reality check.
(upbeat music)
Thing about reality.
It always gets checked.
Really check.
Life's not fair.
(upbeat music)
Look kids while these kits are better in quality
than the fiberglass lookalikes we used to think of,
they're still kits.
Even if you are the most meticulous builder
you don't have the budget
and the R and D of an OEM manufacturer.
So your car is going to be a little rattly in some places.
Some of the panel gaps might not be the best
and it's not going to be as comfortable as an OEM car.
We spoke to a Factory Five 818 owner who said that
even though the car had body panels
and looked like a road car,
it didn't even feel like
anything other than a hardcore track car.
But that's where I think we got it wrong in the 80s.
Okay? Trying to build a Ferrari lookalike is always
going to fall a little short of the real thing
but building a track car or a classic replica is perfect.
Cause those are two types of cars
that don't need to be luxurious or refined.
And the best part is you built it yourself.
And that's the reality, man.
You've just been checked.
(upbeat music)
(beep)
One of the biggest benefits to a kit car over a modified car
is that apart from any use donor bits,
you are working with clean fresh parts
that are designed to go together with common hand tools
and are therefore designed to come apart just
as easily for maintenance, replacement and repairs.
It's like if you've ever installed
brand new parts on your car.
The old road worn grimy ones are a pain to get out
but the new ones slide in super easily.
Imagine if your whole car was like that.
One of the builders we spoke to said that
the best part about working on kit cars
over his classic cars is that he could work on his kit car
for a bit between dinner and bed without getting
so greasy he needed to shower.
A good portion of the kit assembly is more like
building IKEA furniture than it is being a mechanic.
You just got to follow the steps.
Not all kits to the same though.
Kits like the Goblin and the Exomotive Exocet
are designed to be entry-level
and can be completed with about 250 hours of work.
But then there are kits like the one Cam Thai built.
His car is an SLC from super light cars
and it took about 2,500 hours to complete.
Clearly this particular kit is not for first-timers
but Cam's road legal LS3 powered spaceship
was worth the labor.
But even with that, Cam will admit that his SLC
isn't the fastest, the cleanest or the most cost effective.
But the fact that he got it built it all means
that he dodged the fatal flaw of all kit cars.
The biggest killer of even the easiest kit car projects
is the while I'm in their effect.
Let me explain.
If you want to upgrade something
on your regular project car, let's say a new clutch.
You drop the transmission and get to work.
But while you're in there
you might as well do a new rear main seal, right?
And that trans mount could be upgraded.
And since you had to disconnect the exhaust anyway
you might as well put a cat back on there
while you're in there.
And pretty soon, this one job snowballs into six.
Now, imagine if that could happen
with almost every single part.
You could install the OEM calipers from the donor car
or you could get the Wilwood big brake kit.
I think a lot of times the thing that keeps us
in check when working on an already running project car,
especially a first project car,
is that upgrading a part is a two-step process.
You've gotta take off the old part and put on the new one.
But with a kit car you're going to have to put on
all the parts anyway.
So why not put on the best ones possible?
Well, money. Money is why not.
And because of this, many kit cars end up sitting
waiting for parts that will never come
because the builder doesn't want to put on the cheaper part
because it's not any easier.
Which kind of brings me to the second problem
with kit car projects.
Until it runs, it's not a car, it's just a pile of parts.
When Joe got the Miata from Money Pit,
he was able to drive it every day if you want it to.
It wasn't the best little car but at least it ran
and to get you from point A to point B in a pinch
or do a little canyon cruising with buddies.
Kit cars can be lonely projects though.
Even with non running projects with my Imperial
I'm still closer to it running than a kit.
The moment the engine fires, I can at least
drive my Imperial around the block
but when the engine fires on your kit car,
you're only halfway done.
So with that said, what about our buddy Colin?
Well, he's about a quarter of the way done with his Caterham
and hopes to get it on the road in time
for summer of this year.
He's working on it every weekend
and while the finished car won't have a stereo
or ABS or windows that roll down, when it's done
he'll have one of the most unique cars on the block.
And not just unique because it's rare
but because even the first day he drives it,
it's already full of memories.
I'd really want Colin to succeed in building that Caterham.
I think it's super cool that a 17 year old
has taken on a project like that.
If you want to cheer them on, I'll put the link to his blog
in the comments, along with Cam's.
They're both a big help in making this episode.
As for kid cars overall,
I don't think they're the cheapest option
and they certainly aren't an easy first project.
But if you're the kind of person that was already looking
at spending over 10 grand on a builder project
and you want something unique that gets
the most bang for your buck.
And if you've got the space and time to build one
I'd say that kit cars have become a solid option.
You get to work with nice clean parts,
straightforward instructions and you end up with a car
that you know inside and out.
That's actually extremely important.
You can easily diagnose issues cause you
know how it goes together.
And if you're not totally convinced yet
just think about where kit cars will be in 15 years.
What about electric motors and 3D printing?
What will that bring to kit car building?
I think it's safe to say that we all want to see
more of these things on the road
and hopefully after watching this video,
some of you might actually do it.
Let me know what you would build down in the comments.
Did I convince you?
I think kit cars have really obviously come a long way
and it's pretty exciting actually.
Shout out to our boy Justin Reed
for letting us use his Goblin footage.
Check out all the builds and blogs
of the guys that let us show off their projects.
I'll link them all in the description down below.
If you want to know more about the Fiero or the Bug
check out these videos and be kind, take care of each other.
I'll see you next time.