Riding in the Car of the Future, Built in an Illinois Barn

S

At first glance, this rockabilly Batmobile looks like a retro-fetishist's pet project. It's not. In fact, this freak machine, hand-built by a ragtag team in an Illinois town of 1,200, is the deepest look into the future of cars you've ever clapped eyes on. One frigid day in Brooklyn, Gizmodo buckled in for a ride.

This suede-black torpedo is the Illuminati Motor Works Seven, a battery-powered electric car built for the 2010 Progressive Automotive X Prize, which offered $5 million to anyone who could build a 100 MPG car as roomy, fast and sure-footed as a modern family sedan.

S

The Illuminati team didn't win the jackpota mechanical issue disqualified the car in the final competitionbut team leader Kevin Smith and his shadetree crew have been improving their baby ever since. And when Kevin, author Jason Fagone, and two Illuminati team members arrived in the Seven for a Brooklyn book eventIngenious: A True Story of Invention, Automotive Daring, and the Race to Revive America, Jason's new book, is a compelling look at the Automotive X Prize storyGizmodo called shotgun.

The Seven is sweeping: as long as a full-size pickup truck, as slender as a Toyota Prius, and low enough to rest my elbow on the roof. The arcing fenders exaggerate the comic book proportions, while chrome headlight trim from a 1937 Ford, spun aluminum wheel covers, and that sinister matte finish nod to the early days of homebrew hotrodding.

S

S

The carbon fiber and kevlar body took shape in a sketchbook, the rise and run of the curves guided by Kevin's imagination and pages he photocopied from an ancient textbook on aerodynamics. It's draped over a frame of steel tubes that were heated in a wood stove and bent to shape by hand. "We'd just grind and muscle it into shape," Kevin said. "One of the guys [from MIT's X Prize team] said, 'they just beasted this thing together.' And that's what we did."

The bizarre exterior gives way to a more familiar looking cockpit when you climb through the gullwing door, a feature Kevin opted for simply because he could. There's a climate control system, a radio with auxiliary input, even cupholders for the front and backward-facing rear seats. Oh, that's right; the rear seats face the cars behind you.

Excerpt from:
Riding in the Car of the Future, Built in an Illinois Barn