Check out www.local-motors.com. You can actually design the car you want to drive. If you're not a designer, you can vote and support the design you want to drive.
Local Motors is hosting sketch competitions on a monthly basis. Every month a designer will win $1,500 and status in the forums.
We plan to find several designs we can build into limited production vehicles for car enthusiasts. The designer of chosen vehicles will win $10,000 and a chance to participate in the development process.
The first contest is to design an off road machine for Southern California. I hope you will check it out and tell me what you think.
Cheers!
Ariel Aferreira@local-motors.com
This message has been edited. Last edited by: AriFerrari,
Guys this is a good opportunity to gain recognition for the designs you put to paper and potentially see it on the roads.
I found it is also a prime opportunity to allow designers and engineers to view your work and offer their criticism, suggestions and help to further improve it, even if its a project which isn't linked directly to the competitions.
have to say Local-Motors is a dream destination for all car design enthusiasts, designers who want to see their creations built into a street legal cars, and all who have a drive to enter the industry. All this through a company who believes in the idea that Design leads in the auto industry.
Great question. Yes, the competition is open to everyone. We have registrants, members and visitors from 65 different countries! One of our Charter Members is from Romania, Razvan Mititelu.
You are right that the first competition is a challenge to design for California. Local Motors will build its first facilities and first cars within the US. If we choose to build one of the designs from the California competition, then we will set up the facility in California.
We plan to have multiple facilities, each building exciting vehicles for specific regions. This decentralized model is part of Local Motor's core. By designing for a specific area, every part of the car design should be relevant to the driver. By building the cars in the place they were meant to be driven, we hope to foster local pride in both the community and among the car enthusiast drivers/buyers.
It is important to point out that we will build limited-production vehicles. We are not building a mass market product, we want to satisfy the desires of car enthusiasts specifically. Think radical and exciting design, a gorgeous body to top off supreme engineering and efficiency.
Though our website is new, we have been building Local Motors for the past two years. Our prototype and facility are in progressive planning stages. Through private investment we have raised several million dollars. We intend to have a car on the road within the next 24 months. This is not an idea, a possibility, or an attempt - it's happening NOW.
No matter which area the challenge is based on, designers can take pride in competing and winning. If you win not only will you win recognition from a world-wide audience,cash, prizes and a chance to participate in the development process, your name will be on every car built of your design (think Pininfarina).
You can find Competition Guidelines and Terms of Use at the bottom of each page. This is a good thing for every designer to check out.