The History of Auto Body Kits

Per Wikipedia, car body styles have been around from the earliest days of the automobile. The Englishman Thomas Hyler White developed a design for a car that could be assembled at home in 1896 and technical designs were published in a magazine called The English Mechanic.^[1] In the United States the Lad's Car of 1912 could be bought for US$160 ($3000 in 2006) fully assembled or US$140 ($2600 in 2006) in kit form.^[2]


cat back dual exhausts


It was, however, not until the 1950s that the idea really took off. Car production had increased considerably and with rust proofing in its infancy many older vehicles were being sent to breaker yards as their bodywork was beyond economic repair. An industry grew up supplying new bodies and chassis to take the components from these cars and convert them particularly into sports cars. Also, in the UK up to the mid 1970s, kit cars were sometimes normal production vehicles that were partially assembled as this avoided the imposition of car tax as the kits were assessed as components and not vehicles.

vertical doors


The Lotus Elan, for example, was available in this form. Often the cars could be taken home and completed in only a weekend.
Current kit cars are often replicas of well-known and expensive classics and are designed so that anyone with a measure of technical skill can build them at home, to a standard where they can be driven on the public roads.^[3] During the 1970s many kits had bodies styled as sports cars that were designed to bolt directly to VW Beetle chassis. Examples including the Bradley GT, Sterling, and Sebring were made by the thousands and many are still around today. The AC Cobra and the Lotus 7 are particularly popular examples, the right to manufacture the Lotus 7 now being owned by Caterham Cars one of a handful of Lotus 7 dealers in the 60's and early 70's who bought the rights to the car from Colin Chapman in 1973. These replicas are conceptually like the original, but their bodies are usually made of fiberglass mats soaked in polyester resin instead of the original sheet metal still used on the Caterham Cars.

These kit cars enable vintage or classic car enthusiasts to possess a vehicle of a type that, because of their scarcity, they may not be able to afford, and to take advantage of modern technology.