00:10This 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
00:29some 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.
00:51The 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 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
01:13that was faster in the corners.
01:14Back then the Camaros and the Mustangs were big horsepower and the Lotuses and the European
01:19sports cars were lower horsepower and 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
01:38weight there 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.
01:50So, we also made the car tail heavy, so the weight distribution is about 55 to the rear,
01:56but this gives it a nice mid-engine car feel, it has a little bit of oversteer, it likes to
02:02drive through corners, it's really easy to drive, really friendly, really difficult to
02:06spin, I mean really difficult to get out of control, and we've tried completely, and it
02:13makes for a very high performance car that's really easy to drive by a novice, and we're professional.
02:18Each Lucra is built to order, and from start to finish, the build process takes around
02:238 weeks.
02:24We 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.
02:38After 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 their car.
02:48We take them and the car to a track, and we just carefully warm it up, carefully lap it
02:53slowly, and keep checking it, and lap it faster and faster and faster with a race driver to
02:58help to train the customer how to drive it properly.
03:01And by the end of the day, the car is fully seated and broken in, the driver is fully trained,
03:06and after that we put the car in paint, and then interior.
03:09At that point, the car is back here, we have one final check over again, make sure everything
03:14is how we want it, we reassemble it, and we ship it to the customer.
03:18But aside from its incredible performance, the most rewarding part about designing the
03:23car is the reaction it gets from others.
03:26It's done a lot of things that I wouldn't do in a Wrangler car.
03:28It's won races, it's jumped bridges in Mexico, it's been in movies, it's been off road.
03:36The main thing what it does, that most every other car I've been around doesn't do, is
03:40it stops traffic everywhere it goes.
03:42Everyone wants to talk about it.
03:44If you go to the gas station, it'll take an hour.
03:46It's just, everywhere you get, it gets near you, it wants to talk about the car.
03:50Everywhere you go, it makes people smile.
03:52Nobody's intimidated by it, nobody's threatened by it.
03:55They're just happy to see it, and they want to talk about it.
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