2014 SEMA Black Off-Road Thing
- Thread starter wayoflife
- Start date
StrizzyChris
New member
It looks like RoboCop and Batman collaborated to make a Raptor/Buggy hybrid. It appears they do pretty awesome work! :rock:
AllAmericanInfidel
Caught the Bug
I like it. No idea what it is, as it really doesnt resemble anything to me, but I would drive the crap out of it!
OverlanderJK
Resident Smartass
Needs a triple bypass and I'll test it out. :thumb:
Linebacker
Caught the Bug
It's easy to figure out what these vehicles are. They're almost always based on a production vehicle. This one is a ah,...???
GCM 2
New member
So let me help you guys out. About 4 or 5 years ago DARPA (the military studies and project group) partnered with the Military organization I was with on developing a light weight, quick response vehicle for specific situations that would need to be infiltrated and exfiltrated quickly with one or two casualties. So we contacted Local Motors, which produces the Rally Fighter car (here in Phoenix). The culmination of the project was this, known as the "Flypmode", should still be searchable on the Internet. I was lucky enough to be a test driver and suspension tuner while we had it. Power supplied by an LS3 with 4L60 trans. Basically it's just a re bodied Rally Fighter.
Here are some photos of it in our shop when it was flat sand colored, in fact the black one at SEMA may be an entirely different vehicle than our test mule.
Here are some photos of it in our shop when it was flat sand colored, in fact the black one at SEMA may be an entirely different vehicle than our test mule.
Sithwindu
Member
Wow Greg thanks for that info! How was that beast thing?!
GCM 2
New member
A little top heavy and lots of blind spots, but a 433hp LS3 made it fun to throttle steer around our test track. I definitely would not turn it down if it was given to me. The Rally Fighter sits a quite a bit lower, but still has a fairly long nose on it, so I'm not sure it would be too much better as far as blind spots go.
GCM 2
New member
Just one of those weird coincidences really. It's kind of funny, because about a year ago when I was flying back from D.C. there was a guy sitting next to me on the plane and he noticed my screen saver on my iPad (it was a photo from KOH), he asked if I was into off-roading and one thing leads to another he mentioned he worked at Local Motors and builds the Rally Fighter cars. I start laughing, showed him some of my photos from work of the Flypmode vehicle and he freaks out. He said that Local Motors heard that the government had destroyed, or crushed it, or something like that. I said no, that the project ended up going nowhere and the vehicle was in our compound under a covered parking space collecting dust and sitting on four, almost flat tires. I gave him some contact info to the senior logistics person at our unit who had signed for the vehicle and to speak to them about recovering it. Looks like they may have done just that :thumb:
