Meet the crowd-sourced sports car

For any TopGear.commers out there with a penchant for early 1990s videogaming, the name of Local Motors' brand new sports car will bring a warm glow to your heart.

It's called the ‘Street Fighter 01', and it wants to become "the ultimate affordable high performance track enthusiast platform on the market". Hadouken!

Local Motors is, of course, the revolutionary open-source outfit behind the crowd-sourced Rally Fighter we drove a while back, and the 3D-printed car. Earlier this year it announced it was accepting design entries for a new sports car platform, with the winner receiving a healthy $7,500 prize and the chance to see his or her render being made real.

So step forward Greg Thompson - known to the internet as TaurusNut - whose SF-01 Street Fighter was selected by the Local Motors jury as the finest of over 200 efforts. LM said it's a "beautiful design featuring an exposed frame and strategic use of body panels". Exposed frames, as the Ariel Atom proves, are a good thing.

The SF-01 features inboard suspension, and the ability to accommodate inline four/six-cylinder engines and even a V8 within its mid-front engine layout.

All body panels on the SF-01 "are designed to be easily manufactured", and each can be produced using a one-piece open-face mould - Local Motors, remember, demonstrated a 3D-printed car earlier this summer. There's plenty of storage space, thanks to a recessed boot and a pair of storage bins above the rear wheels. Handy.

It also features Hella bi-xenon headlights, rear lights from the Dodge Dart, and universal motorbike LED indicators, in order to meet the DOT requirements.

Now the final design has been picked, LM will investigate sourcing the components, materials and working out production processes to bring the SF-01 to market. Are open-source cars the future?

*We've included pics of the 2nd and 3rd placed entries, too