Local Motors: Best Place to Build Your Dream Car (Video)

We've spent the last year in the laboratory putting Phoenix under the microscope to reveal hundreds of specimens of the best culture, outdoor adventures, shopping, dining, and nightlife the city has to offer. And we're finally ready to publish our results. Nerd alert! Now presenting Scientific Phoenix. Boy, you wish...

By Phoenix New Times

September 29, 2012

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We've spent the last year in the laboratory putting Phoenix under the microscope to reveal hundreds of specimens of the best culture, outdoor adventures, shopping, dining, and nightlife the city has to offer. And we're finally ready to publish our results. Nerd alert! Now presenting Scientific Phoenix.

Boy, you wish your high school shop class was as cool as Local Motors in Chandler. It's a space where auto enthusiasts, fabricators, engineers, and designers come to create vehicles conducive to the local environment.

The Rally Fighter is the flagship vehicle of Local Motors, designed by Song Ho Kim, who won Local Motors' open competition. It's built for the American Southwest, and as intense as it looks, it's perfectly okay to take it out on Interstate 10.

While Local Motors has an international online community of engineers and designers called The Forge, the coolest thing about this space is that you can (for the right price) build a Rally Fighter for yourself. From scratch. In six days. Even if you don't know how an engine works or why it's a called a monkey wrench, Local Motors will pair you up with a member of their team and you can drive this bad-ass car home in about a week. Learn more about it in the video by Evelyn Ngugi below.

Check out the complete edition of Best of Phoenix® 2012.

...And take a scientific journey through the Best of Phoenix® 2012 micro-site.

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