Making Your Own Mclaren F1 LM

It isn’t often we get a project that has an eighteen-year-long timeline, as staying focused on one project for that long is a significant investment of someone’s lifetime. But when you’re making your own carbon copy Mclaren, you need to be prepared for it to take a while. Unfortunately, there are only 6 of them in the world so for most people if you want one, you need to make your own.

Granted, in those eighteen years, [Brough Built] freely admits there were some gaps. He scrapped most of the earlier work, and today’s current iteration took about three years. This car is made of steel, aluminum, foam, carbon fiber, and sweat. It is a close copy of the F1, and it has all the features you would expect to see on the real thing, like the centered driver’s seat and the gold cladding in the engine bay.

A BMW V12 engine mated to an Audi six-speed gearbox provides the power inside the car. A custom clutch assembly was machined to make it all work. Overall, this is an incredible build with time, and precision just poured into it. Folding and cutting all that metal alone, not to mention all the meticulous welds on everything from the gas tank to the door panels.

Making your own car is a complex and long journey that can be incredibly rewarding. Perhaps not a copy of an existing vehicle but something new; check out this soap shaped hand-made electric car.

DIY Lambo That Made The Real Lamborghini Take Notice

When you start sharing your projects with the world, you never know who might take notice. [Sterling Backus] and his son [Xander] have been building a functional Lamborghini Aventador look alike in their garage, and the real Lamborghini company caught wind of it and decided to turn it into an awesome Christmas ad.

Named the AXAS Interceptor by its creators, the car is built from scratch around a custom tubular space frame chassis. Most of the body panels are 3D printed and then skinned with carbon fibre, with a few sheet metal panels mixed in. The interior is mix of parts from other cars and aftermarket components, with 3D printing to pull everything together. The drivetrain consists of an engine from a Corvette, a transaxle from a Porsche 996, with the rest of the chassis components being either aftermarket or custom-fabricated pieces.

[Sterling] got an unexpectedcall from Lamborghini, and they arranged to secretly sneak a real Aventador into the garage in the dead of night to surprise the rest of the family, and let them borrow it for a few weeks. Lamborghini got some marketing out of it, which most people would probably agree is a pretty good deal. We would admit that we’re quite envious.

The car is driveable, but still many hours from being complete. [Sterling] admits that he is no car building professional, but we’re impressed by what he has been able to achieve so far with this ambitious project, and we’re looking forward to the finished product.

If you want to get your feet wet with your first project car, here’s how you pick one.

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Build Your Own Car… From Scratch


Most of us settle for modding the latest car we’ve bought. [Steve Graber] took another approach and built his own car from scratch. [John] sent in this impressive project. The original was built around Toyota MR2 parts and the body was made from fiberglass after the design was hand made from a wooden support frame, foam and drywall mud that was sanded down to create the shape. After that, molds were made from the slug to allow the panels to be cast from fiberglass. [Steve] is actually offering the car up as a build-it-yourself kit. Personally, I’d like the see the price come down a bit – the 1,500lb street weight would make a sweet basis for an electric car.

Bonus: If you’d doing EVs, bots or R/C toys, you might like this comparison of the latest breed of Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries by [Ian Hooper].