Kit cars have a certain stigma: they're ugly, ungainly, wimpy at best to drive, and generally terrible to own. And that's if the owner isn't trying to pass off a re-bodied VW Bug as an Aventador. But while many kit cars are worthy of these thoughts, a few rise above and beyond to, in some situations, even present a better option for an enthusiast looking for a car than something they could pick up at an average automaker's showroom.
Updated April 2022: Kit cars can be a fun way to have a unique vehicle with a history of being hand-built. While companies like Factory Five offer great options for kit cars, others are simply lemons. We've updated this list to include more sick kit cars and kit cars that make no sense.
Some of these cars are painfully authentic replicas of the great racers of old, literally pulling their bodywork from the same molds as the originals and having every bolt and part underneath that bodywork made exactly to the original car's specifications. But for every one of these masterpieces, a dozen companies sell a poorly made chintzy bodyshell built to drop over a chassis from a car undeserving of being made worse by said bodyshell.
Original VW Beetles were the original massively popular base for these bodies, but more recently, other cars like the Fiero and even the MR2 and the Boxter are now donor cars. Yet, even when there are many creating monstrosities out of formerly good cars—or at least not painfully ugly ones—there are a few whose kits will redefine what many think they can build. Anyone can buy a car from a showroom, but few will build one in their garage. That pride—and notable cost savings—draws many to kit cars.
22 Sick: Factory Five Speedstar
Factory Five produces the most complete kits on the market, and the Speedstar is available as a complete kit, engine included. For less than $25,000, this sick hot rod is waiting for you to build in your garage. The Speedstar is just the latest body style based on the '33 Hot Rod base.
Powering the Speedstar is a small-block V8, but an optional 5.0L Coyote is available for fans of a powerful classic. Though the Speedstar is pricier than a standard kit car, you avoid having to search for and strip a donor car.
21 Makes No Sense: Mercedes-Benz SSK Fake
Just like the Shelby Cobra, the design is simply too iconic not to be copied. The SSK is a prime example of what happens when a classic car becomes too rare or popular for even the rich to buy, and in that case, a fake must be crafted in its place. Unfortunately, the SSK replicas never could live up to the original.
Many SSKs use a VW Type 1 Beetle as a donor, but a Pinto is often substituted. Despite the cheap and widely available donors, the overwhelming amount of fiberglass and oodles of chrome make it tacky and cheaply made. Too bad the SSK was a beautiful vehicle, and it's a shame that replicas haven't been able to match the original.
20 Sick: Exomotive Exocet
Exomotive provides a kit car that looks more like a go-kart than a full-blown vehicle, yet here we are. The Exocet is actually a zippy little number that uses the naturally aspirated engine from a Miata donor car to propel it to incredible speeds. Thanks to the lightweight body, the Exocet can hit a top speed of 135 mph, which seems absolutely terrifying for something with so little protection.
Regardless, Exomotive states that the Exocet is reinforced both in the tubular frame design and in stress points and stiffness. These improvements help handling and reliability, should anything go wrong. On a lighter note, this sick beast can be built for less than $15,000 and comes in stages to break up the price. It looks like there's finally a use for that old Miata no one wants to buy!
19 Sick: Factory Five 818
A mid-engine all-wheel-drive sports car is usually a costly proposition if you can get your hands on one at all. The layout is so cumbersome to design for mass production that only supercars and ground-up homologation racing machines tend to utilize it. But there's a reason those supercars do it that way: for a performance car with an internal combustion engine; it's the best layout, period.
While Factory Five has been selling proper kits of V8-engined muscle cars for years, when it came time to release something for the new generation, they decided to take a WRX and put it back into a mid-engine all-wheel-drive sports car for less than 20 grand.
18 Sick: Factory Five Roadster
Most of Factory Five's throughput isn't for sports cars of their design but well-built muscle car kits resembling the greats of yesteryear while outperforming them. The Roadster is Factory Five's take on the infamous Shelby Cobra, a car built with the simple ethos of the biggest engine in the smallest car.
The originals were downright dangerous machines, but the Roadster can keep itself on the road much more quickly thanks to modern suspension, brakes, and tires. Not to mention, the selection of modern Ford V8s available to put in it is much easier to live with than the solid lifter lumps of the old days.
17 Sick: Factory Five GTM
The ridiculously low cost is perhaps the most obvious positive of kit cars compared with standard production cars. The 818C, a rough analog to something like a Porsche Cayman, could set you back less than twenty thousand dollars all in, including the Impreza donor car.
A Cayman is well over three times that cost, and if one is willing to crank up the boost and spend the money to modify the 818, the cost-to-car ratio just gets better. The GTM is perhaps the extreme of this concept, as it's a bonafide supercar that can be ready to go for thirty grand.
16 Sick: Factory Five Hot Rod Truck
Showing the breadth of what one of the world's best kit car manufacturers does, they build not only a four-wheel-drive mid-engined sports car, a modern take on an old-school legend, and an LS-powered mid-engined supercar but also the beauty you see above: a hot rod truck with a modern tube chassis for rigidity and lightweight. These cars hold a performance design; this muscle truck, on the other hand, is just meant to be undeniably cool.
That said, at under 2,400 lbs and with a Coyote engine of over 400 horsepower, getting up and going isn't going to be a problem.
15 Sick: Factory Five Type 65 R
Perhaps more than any other Factory Five kit, the Type 65-R means business on track. With a body-based initially on the Shelby Daytona Coupes that raced and won on the world stage back when racecars were pretty, the 65-R incorporates an aero kit with parts and effects unimaginable with a GT car in the '60s.
Coupled with modern chassis components, enduring lightweight, and modern brakes and tires, this is a racecar with old looks that'll surpass many modern machines. Not bad for a kit people can buy for less than the cost of an up-optioned Honda Civic and can build themselves in their garage.
14 Makes No Sense: Fiero Enzo
But one has to remember, for every pristine Factory Five, several companies sell kits like The Fiero Enzo. What's really sad about kits like the Fiero Enzo isn't just that they ruin what were perfectly fine donor cars but also that their owners often want to pass them off as the real thing.
If they're actually similar to the real thing in any way, there's something mildly impressive about that. Still, obviously, the car above is more than a bit divorced from a Ferrari Enzo by looks alone. Let's hope this car was a teachable moment for its owner.
13 Makes No Sense: EasyRods Belaro
However, if you already have a Camaro, EasyRods will sell you a kit to make it look like a Bel Air—kind of, of course, being the operative term. The original Chevy Bel Air is a classic hunk of chromed and finned artwork, a study in cool.
The Belaro is a catfish Camaro with pointy bits stuck to either end. Those who aren't car people might actually be initially fooled, but even at a distance, they will notice something amiss even if they couldn't put their finger on it. Those in the know would know a Belaro was a poorly made fake instantly but perhaps would take a while to figure out what the actual car underneath the knockoff fiberglass was.
12 Make No Sense: EasyRods Ford Kit
Speaking of knockoff fiberglass, EasyRods doesn't just produce displeasing kits for catfish Camaros but ones for '90s Thunderbirds as well. What's somewhat interesting about this kit is that it appears to take the front much more seriously than the back in terms of authenticity.
The front clip kit is actually quite close in mimicking a classic Ford's body while on the frame of a malaise-era Ford Thunderbird. But the kit ends at the pillar, and the distinctly square body shape of the Thunderbird is pretty hard to mistake for anything else. At least this kit comes closer to improving on its donor car's looks than the Belaro does.
11 Makes No Sense: 2CV-based Burton
The Burton seen here doesn't look that bad. It's a cute little '50s style roadster—certainly not everyone's taste but could be far worse. The problem this time is not with the kit but the donor car. Underneath that cutesy shell is a 2CV.
The 2CV is a little French number whose name refers to "two horsepower." The actual car made about nine, making the later versions that presumably power this roadster sound monstrously powerful at 30 horsepower. That's pretty crazy—in a bad way. The engine, of course, wasn't the only sad part of these little boxes of poverty, as the power plant alone is a good reason not to build another car around a 2CV.
10 Sick: Ultima Evolution
But while some continue to put their bodywork on other people's already terrible cars, some are simply interested in going as fast around a track as possible for as little money as possible, preferably while street legal. That's what Ultima exists for, and the small British company has been succeeding on that front for a very long time now.
Their recent model is the Evolution, a car making a step forward from the 720 and 1020 models that each had that amount of horsepower, respectively. That kind of power in a vehicle that weighs less than an original Miata is absolutely terrifying in all the best ways possible. And thanks to its mid-engine layout, some of that power might actually be usable.
9 Sick: Evo200
Motorsport replicas are one of the best types of kit cars, and if one buys from the right company, one can get a hot deal and a scorching car. The car in question with the Evo200 kit is the RS200, the famous Group B rally car that continued to dominate RallyCross races after the series it was built for was shut down due to excessive death and destruction.
The Evo200 is essentially the same car underneath the bodywork pulled from only slightly modified molds, meaning this is a four-wheel-drive mid-engine rally car—tube chassis, jump-capable suspension, and all.
8 Sick: Gelscoe Motorsport GT40
The high end of motorsport replicas is more than a slightly harrowing place. The real versions of these cars are often worth millions, so even at what would be the equivalent of a kit car level for anything else, the prices are still what one would pay for a medium-sized house. However, what one gets for that price is essentially a GT40 that was built yesterday.
Every panel, frame rail, tire tread, tail light, side mirror, window, and of course, engine component is identical to the original racers in every way. As track machines, buying and having one of these built makes a lot more sense than racing something not old in technology but old physically.
7 Sick: RCR917
Similar to buyers of the Gelscoe GT40s, pretty much everyone who buys an RCR917 is a vintage racer. These guys were generally fanboys back in the day when these monsters actually roamed racetracks looking for their next victory and since have grown up and gotten the cash to do it themselves.
Ironically, it's often cheaper to build a car superior to the original with modern technology with the original body draped over the top than to rebuild everything exactly as it was before. That's essentially what RCR have done with their 917 replicas, making it safer and stronger while just as fast.
6 Sick: Lister Bell
The Lister Bell is another kit car replica that's far and above the better car when compared to the original. Besides having the original Lancia Stratos's gorgeous looks kept completely intact, the Bell has a new chassis setup with modern parts, is far more reliable and safe, and even has the glorious yet cheap and plentiful 2GR Toyota V6 as a powerplant.
This V6 is the same engine used in various high-performance Lotus cars, for example, and many swap them into MR2s whose owners want real power without turbo lag. 300 horsepower in a 2,000-pound car sounds pretty good.
5 Makes No Sense: Midas Cortez
While some kit cars sound like an excellent idea even before getting into the details, some illicit concern well before anything serious actually happens. The Cortez is the latter. The stumpy, ugly exterior look is less than reassuring, and the company's website is missing supposedly easily accessible details for engines, performance, and so on.
The entire enterprise seems just a bit shady, referencing glowing reviews that talk in incredible general language. No part of the company's press seems to give solid numbers for anything besides that their cars can be equipped with engines from 1.1 to 1.8 liters and cost less than 5,000 dollars to start.
4 Makes No Sense: Dio40 Pickup
This kit is yet another kit that probably doesn't improve the look of the donor vehicle.
Those who built the kit likely were already of age when the boxy '80s S10 was introduced, seeing it as just a boring shape.
Many of us since see it as a classic, though—a rugged and clean design that harkens back to low-budget street racers making it work. The '40s Ford Coupe front-end lookalike is a strange addition to a General Motors truck, but the thing about kit cars is that literally anything can be done, and most of it has been done.
3 Makes No Sense: MTV Concepts ETV
If the people at MTV concepts were looking to create the most ludicrous-looking vehicle they could, they probably succeeded. The problem, of course, is that in succeeding at that, they probably blind half the people who look at this car simply for how ugly it is.
MTV is an interesting company that builds vehicles for movies, including the Joker's car from Suicide Squad. Their expertise in creating things that look good enough to pass muster in a five-second movie clip isn't questioned, but their taste probably should be. At least their other cars aren't so bad.