00:00000 This incredible hand built super car can go from 0-60 in under 3 seconds and can reach
00:15and can reach speeds of over 200 miles per hour, but it will cost you between $96,000
00:21and $128,000 to buy one.
00:24The Lucra is exciting. It's easy to drive. It gives you a lot of confidence. It inspires
00:29some really daring maneuvers and crafts, but it's just fun. Everyone who gets out of it
00:35has a huge smile on their face.
00:37The Lucra was the brainchild of Luke Richards, and he set up his California-based boutique
00:42car company to manufacture it.
00:44I first came up with the idea for the Lucra car in 2005. We got our first prototype in
00:502006. The 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 with the
01:02maneuverability of a European sports car.
01:06My father told me you could either have a car that was fast in the straightaways or
01:12a car that was fast in the corners. Back then, the Camaros and the Mustangs were big
01:17horsepower, and the Lotuses and the European sports cars were lower horsepower Porsche,
01:21but lighter. Growing up in England and growing up in America, I kind of felt like I had a
01:26passion for V8s, but I also had a passion for lightweight sports cars, so I did what
01:31he said was impossible. We made both in one.
01:33The lightweight body is made from carbon fiber, but it's not just about how little weight
01:38there is. It's also about where it is.
01:41We kept the car down around 2,000 pounds, even with a V8, and we made the car pretty
01:46stout. We didn't skimp out on any of the safety or rigidity, because that's equally important.
01:50We also made the car tail-heavy, so the weight distribution is about 55 to the rear, but
01:56this gives it a nice mid-engine car feel. It has a little bit of oversteer. It likes
02:01to drive through corners. It's really easy to drive, really friendly, really difficult
02:06to spin. I mean, really difficult to get out of control, and we've tried completely, and
02:12it makes for a very high-performance car that's really easy to drive by a novice or a professional.
02:18Each Lucra is built to order, and from start to finish, the build process takes around
02:23eight weeks.
02:24We start off with a computer model of the chassis. All the tubing is laser-cut. All
02:29the sheet metal is laser-cut. By the chassis, it gets made. It goes to powder coat. The
02:33body gets made at about the same time. The body is all in one piece, so it's very, very
02:37strong all by itself.
02:38After we're done with the assembly, it goes out for alignment. We like to custom and do
02:42all the testing, because we feel like this way they feel more attached to the car. We
02:47take them and the car to a track, and we just carefully warm it up, carefully lap it slowly,
02:53and keep checking it, and lap it faster and faster and faster with a race driver to help
02:58to train the customer how to drive it properly.
03:01By the end of the day, the car is fully seated and broken in. The driver is fully trained,
03:05and after that, we put the car in paint and then interior. At that point, the car is back
03:10here. We have one final check over again, make sure everything is how we want it. We
03:14reassemble it, and we ship it to the customer.
03:17But aside from its incredible performance, the most rewarding part about designing the
03:22car is the reaction it gets from others.
03:25I've done a lot of things that I wouldn't do in a regular car. It's won races, it's
03:30jumped bridges in Mexico, it's been in movies, it's been off-road. The main thing what it
03:36does, that most every other car I've been around doesn't do, is it stops traffic everywhere
03:41it goes. Everyone wants to talk about it. If you go to the gas station, it'll take an
03:45hour. It's just everywhere it gets near you, it wants to talk about the car. Everywhere
03:50you go, it makes people smile. Nobody's intimidated by it. Nobody's threatened by it. They're
03:54just happy to see it and they want to talk about it.
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