Makers: The New Industrial Revolution by Chris Anderson

Author:Chris Anderson [Anderson, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: General, Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780307720979
Publisher: Crown Business
Published: 2012-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

A competition for every hubcap

Local Motors started in Wareham, Massachusetts, about an hour south of Boston, in an industrial park behind Factory Five Racing, a kit-car company and investor in the new firm. The kit-car connection is both a part of Local Motors’ heritage and a warning of what it must avoid. Kit cars have been around for decades, standing as a proof-of-concept for how small manufacturing can work in the car industry. They combine hand-welded steel tube chassis and fiberglass bodies with stock engines and accessories. Amateurs typically assemble the cars at their homes.

In the kit-car business the vehicles are typically modeled after famous racing and sports cars, making lawsuits and license fees a constant burden. This makes it hard to profit and limits the industry’s growth. Factory Five has sold only about eight thousand kits since it started in 1995.

Rogers and his cofounder saw a way around this. Their company would build only original designs; rather than invoking classic cars, they would reimagine what a car could be. The product would be created by its community, who are also its customers. But don’t confuse a community with a committee. The winning designs would be decided by voting and competition, not compromise and consensus.

In 2008, Local Motors started its contest for its first car, a Baja racer. To help steer the community and seed their work, Rogers challenged them to use the World War II–era P-51 Mustang fighter plane as inspiration: it’s a classic and gorgeous aircraft that represents some of the qualities he hoped the car would eventually display: power, toughness, agility, and cool. Most important, it wasn’t already a car, so presumably the company wouldn’t get sued for infringing someone’s intellectual property with the homage.

The winner of the overall design was Sangho Kim, a graphics design student at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California (he eventually claimed $20,000 in prize money for his contributions). But once his body had been selected, there were more than a dozen other competitions for subassemblies ranging from the rearview mirror to the stylish vinyl “skins” that substitute for paint on the body. What all the contributors 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.

In the end, more than 160 people contributed to the eventual design.

How to avoid the usual perils of committee design—either a camel or a gold-plated elephant? The Local Motors team exercises good old-fashioned leadership. At one point in the Rally Fighter design, the community fell in love with a taillight design of their own creation. Okay, responded Rogers, we can do that. But it will add $1,000 to the price of the car. Replied the community, “We don’t love it that much!” They settled on a seventy-five-dollar part from Honda, which actually looks absolutely fine on the car. Rogers gently led the community into collectively getting smarter about car economics, without having to dictate the outcome.

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