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00:12This incredible, handmade supercar can go from 0-60 in under 3 seconds and can reach
00:15speeds of over 200mph.
00:18But it will cost you between $96,000 and $128,000 to buy one.
00:21$128,000 to buy one.
00:24The Lucra is exciting. It's easy to drive, it gives you a lot of confidence.
00:28It inspires some really daring maneuvers and craps, but it's just fun.
00:33Everyone who gets out of it has a huge smile on their face.
00:36The Lucra was the brainchild of Luke Richards,
00:39and he set up his California-based boutique car company to manufacture it.
00:44I first came up with the idea for the Lucra car in 2005.
00:48We got our first prototype in 2006.
00:51The job of the car is to be a lightweight, high-performance, high-powered car.
00:57The aim of his design was to combine the speed and power of an American muscle car
01:02with the maneuverability of a European sports car.
01:06My father told me you could either have a car that was fast in the straightaways
01:11or a car that was fast in the corners.
01:13Back then, the Camaros and the Mustangs were big horsepower,
01:17and the Lotuses and the European sports cars were lower horsepower Porsche, but lighter.
01:22Growing up in England and growing up in America, I kind of felt like I had a passion for V8s,
01:26but I also had a passion for lightweight sports cars.
01:29So I did what he said was impossible, and we made both in one.
01:33The lightweight body is made from carbon fiber,
01:36but it's not just about how little weight there is, it's also about where it is.
01:40We kept the car down around 2,000 pounds, even with the V8,
01:43and we made the car pretty stout.
01:45We didn't skimp out on any of the safety or rigidity, because that's equally important.
01:49We also made the car tail heavy, so the weight distribution is about 55 to the rear,
01:55but this gives it a nice mid-engine car feel.
01:58It has a little bit of oversteer.
02:00It likes to drive through corners.
02:02It's really easy to drive, really friendly, really difficult to spin.
02:05I mean, really difficult to get out of control.
02:09And we've tried completely,
02:11and it makes for a very high-performance car that's really easy to drive by a novice.
02:16And we're professional.
02:18Each Lucra is built to order,
02:20and from start to finish, the build process takes around eight weeks.
02:24We start off with a computer model of the chassis.
02:27All the tubing is laser-cut, all the sheet metal is laser-cut.
02:31By the chassis it gets made, it goes to powder coat,
02:33the body gets made at about the same time.
02:35The body's all in one piece, so it's very, very strong all by itself.
02:38After we're done with the assembly, it goes out for alignment.
02:41We like to custom and do all the testing,
02:43because we feel like this way they feel more attached to the car.
02:47We take them and the car to a track,
02:49and we just carefully warm it up, carefully lap it slowly,
02:53and keep checking it and lap it faster and faster and faster
02:56with a race driver to help to train the customer how to drive it properly.
03:00And by the end of the day, the car is fully seated and broken in.
03:04The driver is fully trained.
03:05And after that, we put the car in paint and then interior.
03:08At that point, the car is back here.
03:10We have one final check over again,
03:12make sure everything is how we want it.
03:14We reassemble it, and we ship it to the customer.
03:17But aside from its incredible performance,
03:20the most rewarding part about designing the car
03:23is the reaction it gets from others.
03:25It's done a lot of things that I wouldn't do in a regular car.
03:28It's won races, it's jumped bridges in Mexico,
03:32it's been in movies, it's been off-road.
03:35The main thing what it does that a lot of,
03:37most every other car I've been around doesn't do
03:39is it stops traffic everywhere it goes.
03:42Everyone wants to talk about it.
03:43If you go to the gas station, it'll take an hour.
03:46It's just everywhere it gets near you,
03:48it wants to talk about the car.
03:49Everywhere you go, it makes people smile.
03:51Nobody's intimidated by it, nobody's threatened by it.
03:54They're just happy to see it, and they want to talk about it.
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