Kit cars

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Mar 20, 2012, 4:13:06 PM3/20/12

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Fiberfab FT Bonito, a kit-car on a VW Beetle chassis.

A kit-car is an automobile that is available in kit form, i.e. you buy it in parts that you have to assemble yourself. Usually you take many of the parts from one or more donor vehicles. A common type of kit car is the dune buggy based on VW parts. Many kit cars are made to look like historic or current cars (the AC Cobra is a popular one) while other are completely original designs.

In the UK during the 1950s, 1960s and beyond, “kit cars” were sometimes also production vehicles that were partially assembled in order to circumvent the extraordinarly high “value added” taxes of the era. Often the cars could be taken home and completed in as little as a weekend.

Several of todays sports car producers such as Lotus and TVR started as kit car makers.

According to figures given to the magazine Total Kit Car the most popular kit in the United Kingdom is made by Robin Hood Sportscars who sell 700 kits a year.[1]

Australian Kit Car manufacturers

Alpha Sports
PRB

Canadian Kit Car manufacturers

Lemans Prototypes

Estonian Kit Car manufacturers

ESTfield

New Zealand Kit Car manufacturers

Fraser Cars Ltd

Swedish Kit Car manufacturers

Dala7
Esther
Mania Spyder
Pagano[2]
Racing Plast Burträsk (RPB)

UK Kit Car manufacturers

Buckler Cars
Caterham Cars
Clan
Davrian
Fairthorpe Cars
Ginetta Cars
Locost
Lotus Cars
Marcos
Midas Cars
MK Sportscars
Robin Hood
Rochdale
Tornado (car company)
Trident (car company)
TVR
Unipower
Westfield Cars

Additionally, there are over 120 kit cars based around the Mini