The Homemades

Yes, you can build a Locost sports car for just a few grand.

Anyone can build a car. Just hire a pro and begin practicing your penmanship for writing zeros on an unending number of personal checks.

Or you can try doing it yourself — and attempt to spend less than 10 grand.

Don't laugh. We recently met up with four guys who have built cars themselves and didn't wind up in bankruptcy or divorce court. One built a car for a few bucks more than the $1400 we forked over not long ago to buy the world's most toxic 1980 Mercedes diesel car [ C/D, April 2006].

There's a good deal of interest these days in back-yard carbuilding, thanks to Ron Champion. In 1996, he wrote a book, Build Your Own Sports Car for as Little as £250. In Yankee greenbacks, that's about $465. The book does show how to build an inexpensive sports car practically from scratch, but more important, it can get a gearhead thinking, "Hey, I could do that!" In England, where the book was published, Champion inspired about 400 would-be Colin Chapmans and Enzo Ferraris to build their own cars. In 10 years, about 60,000 copies of the book have been sold, which is a lot for a how-to book. A third edition is due out next spring with a revised, more realistic title: Build Your Own Sports Car for as Little as £1000. That's about $1800.

Champion's instructions describe a car that looks much like a Lotus 7, and he appropriately named it the Locost (pronounced "low cost"). Cloning the 7 was logical because the Lotus, which first appeared in 1957 (oddly enough as a kit), is probably the most fundamental sports car ever built. It's a lot of fun to drive, and its appeal continues even after five decades—indeed, there are several kit cars for sale today that resemble the original. The most well-known is the Caterham, offered by an English company that bought the rights to the Lotus 7 in 1973. We've test-driven more than a few of them; the Caterham is quick and agile and feels wired to your brain. We'd all have one except they're expensive — a basic model costs more than 30 grand.

Champion, though, says you could build your own Lotus 7-type car for a fraction of what a Caterham goes for. Could that be true?

It's true, but it's not easy. The Locost builders we spoke with all said Champion's $30 book was their inspiration, but by the time they'd finished, they had relied on a lot more resources than the 191-page book.

"The biggest resource by far," says Mark Rivera, a 29-year-old engineer from Lexington, Kentucky, "was other builders I met over the Internet."

There are discussion groups on Yahoo! called Locost and Locost NA (for "North America"). From those starting points, most builders end up at Run by a 33-year-old engineer from Orlando, Florida, Jim McSorley's site chronicles his odyssey of building a Locost (it's not yet finished) and also has Locost chassis blueprints, build sheets, and downloadable 3-D models. These items make creating the steel-tube chassis easier.

McSorley's downloads are free, which is probably because of the grass-roots nature of the hobby and also because the demand is small. There are several hundred Locosts knocking around England, but here in the U.S., they are just catching on. The problem has been that Champion's book recommends donor parts—engines, transmissions, axles—from cars that are readily available in England but not here.

Several North American companies, however, have begun selling various bits and pieces to simplify the process. Builders can buy frames and parts from places like Deman Motorsport ( and Coveland Motorsports. It depends on how much the builder wants to do himself and is willing to spend. For example, a completed frame costs about $2000, but purchased individually, the materials cost less than $500.

Although it is possible to build a Locost for little dough, would the finished product be something you'd want to drive? To find out, we posted a message on the Locost forum and invited builders with finished home-built cars to meet us at an event called the Southwest Se7ens Festival. This annual gathering is held at MotorSport Ranch, a racetrack about 30 miles south of Dallas. We got commitments from four guys, and they all showed up — two with finished cars and two with cars that were running but not quite finished. We did the usual driving and testing and learned that, above all, no two Locosts are the same.


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