A Locost is a home-built car inspired by the Lotus Seven. The car features a space frame chassis usually welded together from mild steel 1 in × 1 in square tubing. Front suspension is usually double wishbone with coil spring struts. The rear is traditionally live axle, but has many variants including independent rear suspension or De Dion tube. Body panels are usually fiberglass nose and wings and aluminium side panels. Each car is highly individualized according to the resources, needs and desires of each respective builder.
The Lotus Seven is a small, simple, lightweight, two-seater, open-top, open-wheel, sports car produced by the British manufacturer Lotus Cars between 1957 and 1972.
A kit car is an automobile available as a set of parts that a manufacturer sells and the buyer then assembles into a functioning car. Usually, many of the major mechanical systems such as the engine and transmission are sourced from donor vehicles or purchased new from other vendors. Kits vary in completeness, consisting of as little as a book of plans, or as much as a complete set with all components to assemble into a fully operational vehicle such as those from Caterham.
Caterham Cars is a British manufacturer of specialist lightweight sports cars established in Caterham, England, with their headquarters in Dartford, England. Their current model, the Caterham 7, originally launched in 1973, is a direct evolution of the Series 3 Lotus Seven designed by Colin Chapman. In the 1990s the company made the Caterham 21, a two-seater soft top alternative to the MGF and Lotus Elise,. A track-only car, the SP/300.R, a joint project with Lola was released for customer testing in 2010 and was scheduled for release in 2013.
Westfield Sportscars is a manufacturer of both factory built and kit versions of several two-seater, open top sportscars. Their main product is a Lotus Seven inspired car – vehicles originally designed by Colin Chapman with only the bare essentials for motoring in order to give the rawest and most exhilarating driving experience.
Lotus Elan is the name of two separate ranges of automobiles produced by Lotus Cars. The first series of cars was produced between 1962 and 1975 as a rear-wheel drive vehicle. The second series was produced between 1989 and 1995 as a front-wheel drive vehicle.
Dutton Cars, based in Worthing, Sussex, England, was a maker of kit cars between 1970 and 1989. In terms of number of kits produced, it was the largest kit-car manufacturer in the world.
Banham Conversions (Banmoco) was a coachbuilder and manufacturer of kit cars from the late 1970s until 2004. The company, based in Rochester, Kent, was founded by Paul Banham who started off as a coachbuilder converting vehicles into convertibles. He made convertible versions of the Ferrari 400, Aston Martin DBS and V8, and the Rolls-Royce Corniche.
JZR Trikes is a UK producer of traditionally-styled, motorcycle-engined trikes in kit form.
Sylva Autokits is a kit car manufacturer based in Lincolnshire, England. Sylva was founded in 1981 by Jeremy Phillips and has developed and produced a number of small and lightweight sports cars. Sylva cars have won a number of 750 Motor Club Kit Car championships.
Factory Five Racing, Inc. (F.F.R.) is an American automobile company that designs and manufactures assembly kits, chassis, bodies and related components for replicars and sports cars.
The Blakely Bernardi is an automobile produced in the 1980s by Blakely Auto Works of Princeton, Wisconsin, USA. Blakely produced a number of automobile models, including the Bearcat and Bantam. This model is named after Enrico Bernardi, Italian inventor of the gasoline internal-combustion engine and automobile pioneer. The Bernardi was available as a completed car or as a kit of parts to be assembled by the buyer.
The TVR Tasmin is a sports car designed by Oliver Winterbottom (coach) and Ian Jones (chassis) for TVR and built in the United Kingdom by that company from 1980 to 1987. It was the first of TVR's "Wedge"-series which formed the basis of its 1980's model range. The Tasmin/280i was available as a 2-seater coupé, as a 2+2 coupé and as a 2-seater convertible.
The Blakely Bantam was a kit car produced by Blakely Auto Works, a manufacturer of kit cars located in a series of US midwest communities in the 1970s and 1980s. Blakely Auto was founded by Dick Blakely to market affordable sports cars in the spirit of the legendary Lotus Seven: compact, lightweight, and with excellent handling. The Bantam's design inspiration was the Dutton, a Lotus Seven replica built in Britain. The Bantam was introduced in 1972 as Blakely's first offering, followed by the larger Bearcat and eventually by the Bernardi. Production of the Bantam continued into the 1980s, when the model was renamed the Hawk, and stopped with the dissolution of Bernardi Auto Works in the later 1980s.
The Sylva Striker is the most enduring of the Sylva models and was a radical evolution of the Star and Leader, dropping the Viva donor car in favour of purpose-built suspension and lighter bodywork. The car was aimed at two markets, the home car builder that required an economical kit that could be built using readily available mechanics tools and the more demanding race car builder who favoured good handling and simple design.
The GKD LEGEND is a light-weight performance sports car manufactured by British company GKD Sports Cars, based in Boughton Monchelsea, near Maidstone with workshops at Lenham. The LEGEND is available in component form, or fully built. It was the first seven inspired car on the market using BMW E36/46 running gear.
The TVR M series is a line of sports cars built by automaker TVR between 1972 and 1979. The series replaced the outgoing TVR Vixen and Tuscan models, and is characterized by a common chassis and shared body style. As with other TVR models before and since, the M-series cars use a front mid-engine, rear-wheel drive layout and body-on-frame construction. The bodies themselves were built from glass-reinforced plastic (GRP). The era of the M series is commonly associated with Martin Lilley who, together with his father, took ownership of the company on 30 November 1965.
Mills Extreme Vehicles (MEV) is a kit car design and manufacturing company based in Gloucestershire, England, founded in 2003 by Stuart Mills and Julie Wilson.
The Dax Rush is a lightweight two-seater sports car that's offered as a kit. It has a multi-tube triangulated steel space frame chassis, front engine and rear wheel or four wheel drive. The body is constructed in Glass-Reinforced Polymer (GRP) with optional aluminium side panels and bonnet. It complies with the Single Vehicle Approval (SVA) scheme. Two optional rear suspension technologies are offered; De Dion and the IRS. The car is known for its 0–100 km/h performance of close to 3 second runs.
The Puma Clubman sports car was conceived and designed by John Karnon and Neville Darwin in Adelaide, Australia based on Ron Champion's book Build your own sports car for as little as £250 - and race it (ISBN 1-85960-636-9). Between 1998 and April 2014, John Karnon constructed 54 chassis and of those 30 have been completed and registered for road use. John Karnon has continued to develop the Puma chassis design to make use of more modern available donor parts.
