00:00This incredible hand-built supercar can go from 0 to 60 in 3 seconds and can reach speeds
00:17of over 200 miles per hour, but it will cost you between $96,000 and $128,000 to buy one.
00:24The Lucra is exciting, it's easy to drive, it gives you a lot of confidence, it inspires
00:30some really daring manoeuvres perhaps, but it's just fun and everyone who gets out of
00:35it has 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
00:512006.
00:52The job of the car is to be a lightweight, high-performance, high-powered car.
00:58The aim of his design was to combine the speed and power of an American muscle car with the
01:03manoeuvrability of the European sports car.
01:06My father told me you could either have a car that was faster in the straightaways or a car
01:12that was faster in the corners.
01:14Back then the Camaros and the Mustangs were a big horsepower and the Lotuses and the European
01:19sports cars were a lower horsepower Porsche, but lighter.
01:22Growing up in England and growing up in America, I kind of felt like I kind of had a passion
01:26for V8s, but I also had a passion for lightweight sports cars, so I did what he said was impossible,
01:32we made both in one.
01:33The lightweight body is made from carbon fibre, 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 stout,
01:46we 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
01:57this gives it a nice mid-engine car feel.
01:59It has a little bit of oversteer, it likes to drive through corners, it's really easy
02:03to drive, really friendly, really difficult to spin, I mean really difficult to get out
02:09of control, and we've tried it completely, and it makes for a very high performance car
02:14that's really easy to drive by a novice, and we're professional.
02:19Each Lucra is built to order, and from start to finish the build process takes around eight
02:24weeks.
02:25We start off with the 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 body
02:34gets made at about the same time, the body is all one piece, so it's very, very strong
02:38all by itself.
02:39After we're done with the assembly, it goes out for alignment, we like the customer to do
02:43all the testing, because we feel like, this way they feel more attached to the car.
02:47We take them and the car to the track, and we just carefully warm it up, carefully lap
02:53it slowly, and keep checking it, and lap it faster and faster and faster with a race driver
02:58to help, to train the customer how to drive it properly, and by the end of the day the car
03:03is fully seated and broken in, the driver is fully trained, and after that we put the
03:07car in paint, and then interior, at that point the car is back here, we have one final check
03:12over again, make sure everything is how we want it, we reassemble it, and we ship it
03:18to the customer.
03:19But aside from its incredible performance, the most rewarding part about designing the
03:23car is the reaction it gets from others.
03:25It's done a lot of things that I wouldn't do in a regular car, it's won races, it's jumped
03:31bridges in Mexico, it's been in movies, it's been off-road, but the main thing what it does,
03:36that a lot of, most every other car I've been around doesn't do, is it stops traffic everywhere
03:42it goes.
03:43Everyone wants to talk about it, if you go to the gas station, it'll take an hour, it's
03:46just, everywhere you get, it gets near you, wants to talk about the car, everywhere you
03:50go, it makes people smile.
03:52Nobody's intimidated by it, nobody's threatened by it, they're just happy to see it, and they
03:56want to talk about it.
03:57People are happy to see it and they want to talk about it.
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