News Source: autoblog.com

It was a bit of kismet that the same month we drove the Caterham 620 R, we drove the Lucra LC470. On the first pass there are plenty of similarities: both were dreamed up by one man with a particular vision of lightweight driving enjoyment, both are reminders of mid-twentieth-century design, both have spartan interiors, both will make loud noises and throw down when the accelerator gets a wallop.

Yet there is more than one substantial difference. The 1,200-pound Caterham tops out with a supercharged four-cylinder with 310 horsepower that howls like an angry kelpie under the whip, where the 2,000-pound Lucra is just getting started with a 450-hp, LS3 V8, and roars like Zeus through large rectangular sidepipes.

Lucra creator Luke Richards is from Southern California but grew up in England, which is how you get the mash-up of a curvaceous and feathery European body propelled by high-horsepower iron – or in this case, aluminum. That body is made entirely of three-layer carbon fiber. The monocoque weighs 130 pounds and is riveted to a laser-cut, tube-framed chassis, then laid up with more CF underneath to fully enclose the tubes. In the best tradition of English roadsters with minimal protection from the elements – a greater test of character in Ye Olde than Orange County – the Lucra doesn't come with windows but you can order a set of Lexan inserts. Its shape was inspired by the Lister Jaguars of the late 1950s; have a look at the Lister Knobbly Jaguar and you're most of the way to the Lucra LC470, down to the yellow and green paint job worn by the first show-car Lucras (or the one that appeared in Fast & Furious 6). It was a fitting design well to draw from, as Brian Lister was also a lone tinkerer devoted to producing his own sports cars.

We like the look of it. Even with that probing snout, it's the best kind of drivable evolution of something from Hanna Barbera's Wacky Races, all curves in two axes and shrink-wrapped length in the other. Eighteen-inch wheels have never looked so big. From outside the car, our favorite aspect is from the rear, where that wide round tail hangs only just above the ground on tires as wide as Alaska.

Underneath the exotica many of the Lucra's bits are prosaic General Motors components, like the C4 Corvette suspension links and the C6 electronic door latches, the fuel pump and regulator from a Chevrolet Silverado 1500 pickup. But who needs bespoke trunk latches? You'll find plenty of above-and-beyond treats where it matters, like 12-sided military-spec bolts throughout and wiring harnesses made in-house with lightweight, aviation-grade wires and connectors. The LS3 breathes through custom 1.875-inch Magnaflow headers and a ceramic-coated exhaust. The best view is from inside the cabin, where your vision is overcome by the three swells ahead of you cresting the front wheels and the engine. In the blue car we drove, we couldn't help thinking we were Neptune driving the waves. Loud, loud waves.

No Lister had an interior as roomy and luxurious as the Lucra. Stitched leather is everywhere, covering the carbon fiber dash and center tunnel. The aluminum racing seats are quite comfortable, can be had with diamond-pattern stitching or left bare metal, and with five-point harnesses to keep a body secure. The pedal box is adjustable, as is the stopper behind the clutch pedal, and the steering column tilts and telescopes. There's no airbag on the detachable tiller, but the column collapses in an accident according to NASCAR standards.

Six custom gauges are laid out across the instrument panel, joined by eight toggle switches, but as we've found in almost every classic car we've driven, we barely had need to look at them. With your butt practically riding the grooves in the road, a wide open cockpit, and a growling exhaust note at your feet, you have all the ambient cues you need to figure out how the engine is working and how fast you're going.

On our drive that was often described as "plenty fast." The Lucra had 140 more horsepower than the Caterham 620 R to haul about 800 more pounds. We've already explained, though, that the Caterham is lunatic; this makes the Lucra 470R merely deeply mad. If you needed more, Lucra will be happy to install a 7.0-liter LS7 V8 with 630 hp and up.

Once you get a sense of the roadster's length and where its invisible nose is, and learn the clutch engagement point, the Lucra is easy to haul around town. The rack-and-pinion steering needs elbow grease at low speed, due in part to the 275-section rubber up front and ginormous 315-section rubber in the rear, but it won't ever wear you out. The only sticky point we encountered was the Tremec TKO 600RR five-speed manual – the short-throw shifter felt good, but the action was a little notchier than we would have preferred.

The fully adjustable suspension comes tuned by racing outfit Pro-Shocks with aluminum shocks and 180-lightweight barrel springs with five inches of travel, but they can only do so much to tame an all-carbon body wrapped around four-inch-diameter steel tubes and completely sealed underneath with steel plates. The ride is stiff, but as with the steering, it wouldn't stop you from enjoying the car all day so long as you didn't confine yourself to nasty roads.