Want to build your dream car out of a completely other vehicle? A kit car is an automobile that is available in kit form. You buy a set of parts that you have to assemble yourself. Usually many major mechanical parts such as the engine and transmission are taken from one or more donor vehicles. Kits vary in completeness from as little as a book of plans to a complete set of all the components required. The definition of a kit car is usually taken to mean that a number of kits are produced by a manufacturer for sale to the public. A car built at home as a one-off to the designs of its builder is termed a Special.

Kit cars have been around from the earliest days of the automobile. Thomas Hyler White developed a design for a car that could be assembled at home in 1896 and technical designs were published in a magazine called The English Mechanic. In the United States the Lad’s Car of 1912 could be bought for US$160. It was, however, not until the 1950s that the idea really took off. Car production had increased considerably and with rust proofing in its infancy many older vehicles were being sent to breaker yards as their bodywork was beyond economic repair

An industry grew up supplying new bodies and chassis to take the components from these cars and convert them particularly into sports cars. Also, in the UK up to the mid 1970s, kit cars were sometimes normal production vehicles that were partially assembled as this avoided the imposition of car tax as the kits were assessed as components and not vehicles. The Lotus Elan, for example, was available in this form. Often the cars could be taken home and completed in only a weekend.

Current kit cars are often replicas of well-known and expensive classics and are designed so that anyone with a measure of technical skill can build them at home, to a standard where they can be driven on the public roads. During the 1970s many kits had bodies styled as sports cars that were designed to bolt directly to VW Beetle chassis. Examples including the Bradly GT, Sterling, and Sebring were made by the thousands and many are still around today. These replicas are conceptually like the original, but their bodies are usually made of fiberglass mats soaked in polyester resin instead of the original sheet metal. These kit cars enable vintage or classic car enthusiasts to possess a vehicle of a type that, because of their scarcity, they may not be able to afford, and to take advantage of modern technology. A kit car is an awesome project for the hobby loving or automotive male or female.