Even if you had the money, it wouldn't be easy to buy yourself a Lancia 037. Only a few hundred were ever built and good luck getting your hands on one. What if you could just print the car instead?
Local Motors recently showed off that a 3D-printed car is possible. Sure, their vehicle is more than a little rough around the edges, but it was fully constructed within a weekend.
The Local Motors vehicle is a wonderful technology exercise, but in the end it's a small, electric city car of a thing. The world wants something more. As one reader put it, "Now build me an 037."
3D printing doesn't make sense for a lot of automotive jobs. For big batches of pieces, you tend to want things traditionally manufactured. But as Koenigsegg put it, for small batches of parts or quick test pieces, 3D printing is what you want.
So why not open up the plans of rare cars from deceased carmakers to 3D printing? Lancia isn't dead (yet), but there's a whole world of extinct cars that deserve resurrection.
I dream of a future where you could download plans for a TVR Speed 12, print it out and go for a life-threatening rip.
What extinct car, rare to find and impossible to build, would you resurrect with 3D printing?