Tag Archives: Sangho Kim

Design in the Age of Open Source Design

In June, Local Motors, the first open source car company to reach production, will officially release the Rally Fighter, a $50,000 off-road (but street-legal) racer.

The design—described by Wired as a “cross between a Baja racer and a P-51 Mustang fighter plane”— was created by Sangho Kim, a graphic artist and Art Center student. The design was crowdsourced, as was the selection of mostly off-the-shelf components, and the final assembly will be done by the customers themselves in local assembly centers as part of a “build experience.”

Per Wired: “As the community coalesced around his Rally Fighter, members competed to develop secondary parts, from the side vents to the light bar. Some were designers, some engineers, and others just car hobbyists. But what they had in common was a refusal to design just another car, compromised by mass-market needs and convention. They wanted to make something original — a fantasy car come to life.”

Read more: In the Next Industrial Revolution, Atoms Are the New Bits