This is a 2012 Local Motors Rally Fighter, and it’s a vehicle you might have seen before, as this is the one that was featured on Jay Leno’s Garage – you can see the episode embedded below.
It’s powered by a front-mid-mounted 6.2 liter GM LS3 V8 that sends power to the rear wheels via a 4-speed automatic transmission. Performance is brisk, thanks to the 430 bhp on tap and a relatively low curb weight well under 4,000 lbs – not bad for a full-sized off-roader.
Fast Facts: The Local Motors Rally Fighter
- The Local Motors Rally Fighter was a crowdsourced, open-source off-road coupe co-created by an online community and built at a micro-factory in Arizona. Founded in 2007 by ex-Marine Jay Rogers, Local Motors held a design competition won by student Sangho Kim, whose P-51 Mustang-inspired design debuted at the 2009 SEMA Show.
- Under the fiberglass skin sat a front-mid-mounted 6.2 liter GM LS3 V8 producing 430 bhp and 424 lb ft of torque, driving the rear wheels through a 4-speed automatic. The suspension offered 18 inches of travel up front and 20 at the rear on FOX coilovers, making it a serious desert runner that was street-legal in all 50 states.
- Buyers flew to Phoenix and spent six days assembling their own car alongside Local Motors technicians, resulting in kit car titling that sidestepped federal crash-testing requirements. Somewhere between 50 and 92 examples were built before production ended in 2016, and the car appeared in two major Hollywood franchises, multiple video games, and on Jay Leno’s Garage.
- After pivoting to autonomous electric shuttles, Local Motors shut down in January 2022 due to lack of funding. Former engineer Nick Bauer purchased the original BMW diesel prototype and virtually all remaining spare parts at liquidation, becoming the go-to resource keeping roughly 10 Rally Fighters on the road from a storage container in the Arizona desert.
History Speedrun: The Local Motors Rally Fighter
If you spent any time around car culture during the 2010s, you’ve almost certainly encountered the Rally Fighter at least once – maybe in a Transformers movie, maybe on Jay Leno’s Garage, maybe in one of the thousands of articles written about the vehicle when it debuted.
Above Video: This is the original episode of Jay Leno’s Garage from 13 years ago that featured the Rally Fighter – and it’s the same exact vehicle shown in this article that’s now for sale.
It was a crowdsourced, open-source, LS-powered off-road coupe that buyers literally helped build themselves at a tiny factory in the Arizona desert. It had all the ingredients for a modern day automotive legend, so what happened?
A Marine And A Micro-Factory
Local Motors was co-founded in 2007 by John B. “Jay” Rogers Jr., a Princeton and Harvard-educated former U.S. Marine who had served as an infantry company commander. Rogers came from an automotive pedigree, his grandfather had owned the legendary Indian Motorcycle Company and was the first Cummins Engine distributor in the United States.
His idea for Local Motors was unprecedented and completely unproven – he wanted to crowdsource the design, source off-the-shelf parts, and assemble vehicles in small “micro-factories” instead of massive centralized plants. The plan was to bring a new car to market in a fraction of the time and cost of a traditional OEM.
The company initially set up shop in Wareham, Massachusetts, near Factory Five Racing, the well-known and well-respected Cobra and Daytona replica builder. Several early employees had come from Factory Five, and it’s rumored that the kit car company was an early investor, though they’ve never confirmed it.
The company soon relocated to Chandler, Arizona, this was partly so the Rally Fighter could be tested in its natural desert habitat, and partly because Arizona had more favorable kit car regulations at the state level.
Designing A Car Democratically
Rather than handing a brief to an in-house styling studio, Local Motors held an open online design competition in 2008. The winning entry came from Sangho Kim, then a student at the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California.
The Rally Fighter is powered by a front-mid-mounted 6.2 liter GM LS3 V8 that sends power to the rear wheels via a 4-speed automatic transmission. Performance is brisk, thanks to the 430 bhp on tap and a relatively low curb weight well under 4,000 lbs – not bad for a full-sized off-roader.
Kim’s design was inspired by the P-51 Mustang fighter plane, and the community voted it into production over thousands of other submissions. From there, the design was refined through what the company called “co-creation.” The Rally Fighter went from concept to prototype in roughly 18 months, a timeline that would barely cover a door trim revision at a major OEM, and it debuted at the 2009 SEMA Show in Las Vegas.
The Rally Fighter’s parts bin was wonderfully eclectic, even by low-volume manufacturer standards. Turn signals came from BMW, side mirrors from a Dodge Challenger, the fuel filler from Mitsubishi, and taillights from an eighth-generation Honda Civic Coupe. In a particularly charming bit of parts-bin absurdity, the door key was from Honda while the ignition key was from Ford.
The heart of the car was a front-mid-mounted 6.2 liter GM LS3 V8, the emissions-compliant E-ROD variant, producing 430 bhp at 5,900 rpm and 424 lb ft of torque at 4,600 rpm, sending power rearward through a 4-speed GM 4L85-E automatic box.
Being rear-wheel drive only might seem counterintuitive for a dedicated off-roader, but Local Motors took a page from successful Baja desert racers, which have long proven you don’t need four driven wheels to dominate the desert – what you need is suspension travel.
The front end used double A-arms, the rear a live Ford 9 inch axle, all riding on FOX coilover long-travel shock absorbers. This gave the Rally Fighter 18 inches of suspension travel up front and 20 at the rear.
Add Recaro seats, four-point harnesses, a full roll cage, a fiberglass body well suited to low-volume production and helpful for keeping weight in check, and creature comforts like air conditioning and power windows, all sitting on a 115 inch wheelbase at a curb weight of 3,792 lbs – and you had something that was equal parts desert racer and road-legal coupe. Amazingly, it was street-legal in all 50 states.
The original prototype (known internally as “Beta”) used a turbocharged BMW M57 diesel straight-six from a 335d rather than the LS3. Apparently it caused repeated mechanical headaches, and the decision was made to swap it out for something more familiar to American mechanics, and (perhaps arguably) an engine proven to be more reliable.
The Rally Fighter Build Experience
You couldn’t walk into a dealership and drive a brand new Rally Fighter off the lot, no matter how much money you had. Buying one meant flying to Local Motors’ micro-factory in Phoenix and spending six days (typically two weekends) physically helping to assemble your own car alongside a team of company technicians.
You couldn’t walk into a dealership and drive a brand new Rally Fighter off the lot, no matter how much money you had. Buying one meant flying to Local Motors’ micro-factory in Phoenix and spending six days (typically two weekends) physically helping to assemble your own car alongside a team of company technicians.
Every Rally Fighter was unique, with custom wraps, interior configurations, and equipment choices. This hands-on process served a crucial regulatory purpose – because the buyer participated in assembly, the vehicle could be titled as a kit car, sidestepping federal crash-testing requirements that would have been prohibitively expensive for a low-volume manufacturer to meet.
The asking price was somewhere in the vicinity of $99,900 USD, not cheap, but you did get a bespoke car unlike anything else on the road.
How Many Were Built?
It’s actually unclear how many left the factory. Wikipedia lists 50 examples during the 2010 to 2016 production run. Autoblog reported around 30. But Nick Bauer, who worked as a full-time Local Motors engineer during the Rally Fighter production years, said the figure was closer to 92 – “close to 100, but less than 100.”
Bauer’s figure is probably the most reliable as an insider estimate, though the exact number remains unproven for now. Local Motors had originally planned to cap production at 2,000, but sadly they never even got close.
Hollywood, Jay Leno, + GTA
The Rally Fighter appeared in 2014’s Transformers: Age of Extinction and 2017’s The Fate of the Furious (as Letty Ortiz’s car). It featured on Jay Leno’s Garage, appeared in multiple Forza titles and CSR Racing 2, and inspired the Coil Brawler in Grand Theft Auto Online. For a car built in handful-like quantities its cultural footprint was actually quite impressive.
The (Inevitable) Controversy
The kit car classification was the main lightning rod for the company. By having buyers participate in assembly, Local Motors avoided the full suite of federal safety certification that applies to traditionally manufactured vehicles.
Every Rally Fighter was unique, with custom wraps, interior configurations, and equipment choices. This hands-on process served a crucial regulatory purpose – because the buyer participated in assembly, the vehicle could be titled as a kit car, sidestepping federal crash-testing requirements that would have been prohibitively expensive for a low-volume manufacturer to meet.
Detractors saw this as a regulatory end-run for a $100,000 vehicle. Supporters countered that the classification was entirely legal, the car included serious safety equipment, and the whole point was to operate outside the traditional manufacturing paradigm. There were also questions about build quality and consistency – no two Rally Fighters were exactly alike, which was part of the appeal but also meant standards could vary, and often did.
The End Of The Road
After Rally Fighter production wound down in 2016, Local Motors pivoted to 3D printing and autonomous vehicles, unveiling the Strati (billed as the world’s first 3D printed car) and then the Olli autonomous electric shuttle bus.
In December of 2021, an Olli 1.0 shuttle in the Toronto suburb of Whitby crashed into a tree, critically injuring its safety attendant, though a police investigation found it was being operated manually at the time.
Testing of Toronto’s planned Olli 2.0 shuttle trial in the West Rouge area was paused as a result. Less than a month later, on January the 14th, 2022, Local Motors shut its doors for good, reportedly due to a lack of funding unrelated to the bus crash.
The Rally Fighter story has a warm epilogue, though. Nick Bauer bought “Beta” (the original diesel prototype) at a company liquidation auction, along with almost every remaining Rally Fighter spare part in Local Motors’ inventory.
He’s since become the go-to resource for the small community of owners who need parts and advice, estimating he’s kept about 10 cars on the road from his desert storage container in Arizona. The complete Rally Fighter design files also remain publicly available as open-source documents, meaning anyone with the fabrication skills and determination could theoretically build their own.
Thanks to one man and a storage container full of spare parts and a BMW-diesel prototype somewhere in the Arizona desert, the Rally Fighter story didn’t end in abandonment.
The 2012 Local Motors Rally Fighter Shown Here
The 2012 Local Motors Rally Fighter you see here is probably the most famous one ever made, as it was featured on Jay Leno’s Garage, and shown to his audience of millions of petrolheads.
This is a 2012 Local Motors Rally Fighter, and it’s a vehicle you might have seen before, as this is the one that was featured on Jay Leno’s Garage and driven by Jay Leno (see the episode above).
It has a White exterior with Red stripes and checkerboard accents, a full roll cage, a black interior, fiberglass bodywork, and of course, a 6.2 liter LS3 V8 mated to a 4-speed automatic transmission. It has LED headlights, a front nudge bar, bead locker wheels, and a MOMO steering wheel.
It’s now due to roll across the auction block with Mecum in late July, offering a rare chance to buy an original Rally Fighter. If you’d like to read more about it or register to bid you can visit the listing here.
Images courtesy of Mecum
Articles that Ben Branch has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
