Do you know the feeling of entering an estate sale at someone’s house that has recently died? Well, now you can experience that but with a car company. Local Motors, the former maker of the Rally Fighter and a number of autonomous pods, recently died. Now, we get to see what remains… and try to buy it.
The auction has 443 lots, and you can bid on anything from actual Rally Fighters to some of their autonomous vehicles to workshop equipment and lidar sensors.
The real cool stuff is, of course, the Rally Fighters that are for sale. According to the listing, one of them has a 6.2 liter LS2 V8 that’s making about 430 horsepower with a four-speed autobox. It’s all black on the outside, probably because it’s in mourning over the death of the company.
We get it, we really do. It’s sad to watch someone die so needlessly like that. If only there was funding and no ill-advised pivot to autonomous vehicles. But alas, that isn’t the case.
The other Rally Fighter listed is in a much more cheery red, white and blue. Perhaps it’s happy the company is dead? Who’s to say? Everyone needs a little sadism in their lives, right?
The listing even claims this patriotic vehicle boasts a 6.6 liter V8, because more displacement equals more freedom, hence the red, white and blue motif on the outside.
There are also a baker’s dozen Local Motors Olli transporters available for sale. I’m not exactly sure what you’d do with them, but hey, you can buy one if you want! You could even start your own little autonomous fleet in your back yard and be looked at as the pariah of your neighborhood. That would be great.
Another really cool thing for sale? EV chargers that look like old-timey gas pumps. How rad is that?!
There is also an assortment of machine shop equipment and technology necessary for EV vehicles to know where they’re going.
The auction runs from March 15 to 17, so jot that down in your calendars now.
Local Motors officially died in January after years of trying (and obviously failing) to figure out autonomous vehicles.
The company made a big splash in the late 2000s with the release of the Rally Fighter, but never really found a footing after that. Because of this, we now get to rummage through its belongings like an old lady looking for a deal at that estate sale.