Long ago I wanted to start my own car company. I was tired of seeing what I’ve come to call “Middle-Class Cars” (Which, oddly enough, includes many Mercedes-Benz models) be the object of desire when much, MUCH nicer vehicles could be built while remaining affordable. I ran into numerous roadblocks before I even bolted two pieces of metal together.
The cost of such a thing was pretty high, but it wasn’t necessarily out of the question. It would require a lot of metal, many tools, and other various supplies I won’t get into. I had already settled on buying a preconstructed engine because the amount of machinery and research required to build one was something that would prevent such a thing from getting anywhere. In fact, it’s such a complicated thing to do, many car companies use rebranded engines bought from other companies.
The next problem was the chassis (the frame that everything sits on). While constructing one wouldn’t be difficult, current US laws would prevent me from using it. It would have to undergo numerous safety tests just for me to drive it (even if I didn’t sell it, let others ride/drive, etc.), and that would require multiple copies of the car (multiplying the cost, clearly).
A way around this is to build your car on another’s chassis. While the average person may think “Oh, well that’s fine, it’s not like you look at that!”, this sets an incredible number of limits on what you can do to it. You have to have an engine that fits, and it has to go in a specific location, the wheel geometry has to be identical, the cab must retain the same general shape and location. I won’t bore you with any more details (unless such boredom is requested!).
Sure, if I had investors and the like putting money into the project so I could afford these things, I could do it, but I don’t. Even if I did, they might want to suck the life out of my project (“This car looks too fancy! If it’s going to be in the $14,000 to $22,000 range, it needs to look more… How do I put this nicely… Middle-classy?”).
So sure, maybe I could settle for building a car on a chassis that someone else designed, and with someone else’s engine. But, it’s not like I could just buy a cheap used car that had a chassis in good condition. Most vehicles today use a Monocoque chassis which is “good” for making the specific model more rigid, as I’m told at least. Modern race cars, which obviously need to be as safe as possible, use a tube-frame chassis (see the video I’ve posted here) for both performance and safety reasons. Although not in the same heavily-fortified style, I would like my cars to use this sort of chassis.
“But Steve, why don’t you just draw the car and submit it to investors?” …I’m a mechanic, not a pencil artist. For reference and your comedic pleasure, however, I will include a conceptual drawing that I did several years ago (perhaps 2005?) of a car I had in mind (I never actually wanted to produce this particular one, however). Take note of the “circles”, I dare call them, and how often I “artistically” mock ideas like “left/right symmetry” and “directional consistency”. Ha! Who needs those silly things? As if we needed more vehicles bound by the laws of physics! Also, it’s a little dirty because it was rubbing against another drawing, and the graphite from one rubbed off on the other. I used to draw about 3 new car designs a day; mostly just bodies, but I had chassis structural designs and even a number of conceptual engine blocks.
