In the realm of lightweight, elemental sports cars, a few names immediately jump to mind: Ariel, Caterham, Lotus, and perhaps KTM.
Truth be told, these types of vehicles are more popular and more common than you might think. That’s partially because they’re relatively inexpensive to make, generally low-volume sellers, and because they’re mostly track warriors, they don’t have to worry about creature comforts like high-end stereos, multi-zone climate control, and in some cases, doors.
Most of these vehicles use turbocharged or supercharged four-cylinder engines to provide power, but Los Angeles-based manufacturer Lucra Cars is not one of them. The company distills everything we love about ‘exocars’ into a street-legal package, but just barely.
Take the brand’s LC470, a 2000-pound, rear-wheel drive athlete with British-inspired styling and a 6.2-liter Corvette engine. There’s 430 horsepower on tap here, allowing the carbon fiber, tube chassis LC470 to sprint to 60 mph in about 2.7 seconds. And this is the $95,000 base model, if you can believe that.
Moving up the Lucra range, there’s a 7.0-liter, 505-hp LS7 V8 available for the LC470, which pushes the 0 to 60 mph time down to about 2.5 seconds if you can put the power down. Both variants feature a five-speed manual transmission as standard.
There’s a six-inch longer version called the LC470 FS as well, with a race cage-equipped, slick-wearing LC470 FS-R model settling in at the top of the range.
Lucra Cars isn’t all about circuit dominance, though. The brand also offers the L148, a gorgeously sculpted sports car with all the options and interior amenities that are missing from the hardcore LC470 series.
Many automakers use silly taglines to promote their products, by Lucra’s just fits. According to the company, its vehicles are “engineered for maximum fun.” 430 hp and 2000 lbs with a stick shift? Sounds like fun, indeed.
