Lucra Cars: TG drives 680bhp sports car

There’s a nondescript little industrial unit tucked away on a street in San Marcos, California, that hides something wonderful. And although the cars produced here are the kind of fantastic confections that make your ears prick and your nerves jump, the best bit about it is actually a bloke called Luke Richards, who, despite his current sun-drenched living arrangements, hails from the slightly more inclement town of Whitby in Yorkshire.

The story is an interesting one, and altogether pertinent. A Lotus-loving father and an American mum, one an advocate of light weight and cornering prowess, the other exposing him to the seductive throb of a V8 engine – two sides of a cultural heritage that seemed poles apart. A childhood surrounded by various dealings with European exotica (later replicated professionally), and teenage years spent fiddling with various lumps of American iron with more engine than ability. You’ve probably guessed the rest, because Richards is one of those people who has an idea, and actually follows through. Without a car that serviced his particular needs, he decided to build one, and a car company to go with it. From scratch. 

Images: Webb Bland

This feature was originally published in issue 292 of Top Gear magazine

The result is Lucra Cars. Colin Chapman theory with NASCAR execution. So it’s not exactly a complicated proposition: light weight plus big V8 power equals fun. But getting a big, heavy GM LS V8 to sit – and behave – in an extremely lightweight car is not the work of a minute. And we’re talking peculiarly light here (a Lucra weighs in at just over 900kg) and, with a possible 680bhp, not particularly limp. In fact, some of the stats are properly frightening: the 680bhp car can run a quarter-mile in just over nine seconds, hit 60mph in under three and – depending on gearing – run to more than 195mph. There’s a “lesser” 550bhp state of tune that’s not far behind, and pretty much any of the ubiquitous LS-designation engines will fit, from LS3s to contemporary Corvette 7.0-litre LS7 small blocks. 

It’s not just the stats that are impressive, either, because the spec list will get any petrolhead itching to drive one. The millimetrically precise, laser-cut chassis is essentially a tubular spaceframe, the independent suspension (both front and rear) nicked from racing-car geometry, the steering system utilising NASCAR Sprint Cup components. The engine is front-mid-mounted, the drive to the rear, and sent to the floor via a Dana 44 rear diff, while the body is carbon, and reminiscent of myriad classic racers. And that carbon shell only weighs about 60kg – about nine stone to you and me, with the chassis only coming in at 127kg – which is probably the average weight of a prop forward. The traction control comes in two parts – your left and right feet – and stability control is via your actual hands rather than via the mind of a programmer in a beige office cubicle. 

Sounds like a racing car? Pretty much, yes. It’s certainly intimidating when you first fire it up, because the initial report from the exhaust scares birds from power lines in Arizona and makes dogs bark in San Diego. The front view is a sine wave of bonnet, the steering is heavy, the engine straining, even at idle. And yet, if you slot second and take your time, the Lucra – we’re in the 550bhp version – potters around quite happily. It rides well, even given the degenerate state of this part of Cali’s roads, and has a well of torque so deep it could manage with a two-speed auto. But that isn’t the best bit. The best bit is when you drive it a bit faster. 

This is a car that enunciates with absolute clarity the language of the road. The translation is clear, precise and without inflection. But it’s also insistent, and a bit knackering. This isn’t a sports car that you flow through a set of bends – you hustle and manhandle. The body stays flat, the nose tucks hard and your neck takes the strain of a car with plenty of mechanical grip. It will break loose – give it full throttle from a standstill and you have to back off to calm down the wheelspin (right into third gear and worrying speeds), and you are more than usually aware of the fact there are no electronic nannies to help out when you’re being injudicious. But there’s a character to it that’s part racer, part hardcore classic. In a world of digital, this is pure analogue and the better for it. 

The five-speed Tremec ’box is chunky and thick through the action, not heavy as such, but needs a positive clunk to get it to locate properly, the clutch similarly macho. The steering is alive but squirrelly, racked to provide speed and accuracy, rather than absolute comfort. In fact, the whole thing is a basic binary system: you either slot a high gear, prop your elbow on the door and grumble your way around like a cruising muscle car on a Saturday night, or you commit, go hard and handle the consequences. Old-school TNT – largely inert if handled carefully, but mess with it without paying attention and it will casually explode and take off an arm. It’s the kind of experience you used to get with Blackpool-born TVRs: unapologetic, raw, exciting. 

And altogether good. This isn’t a wheatgrass smoothie or superfood after yoga, it’s a shot of Jack and a cigarette on an empty stomach and a hangover. The exhaust manifolds are only about 60cm in length, flowing from the block and pushing forwards slightly to exit either side of the car underneath and slightly ahead of the windscreen pillar. And they make such a racket, it’s hard to believe that they’d even be legal in the UK. A dirty, phlegmy V8 sound, webbed through with a choir of different voices: part dragster, part NASCAR, all American. It grumbles and spits off-throttle, barks and roars and generally rains down aural apocalypse with your right foot pinned. 

Richards seems convinced that “anyone could drive even the 680bhp car and be safe”, but I think that needs amending with the word “slowly”. If you really kick this thing, even with 550bhp, it lights up the scenery and makes you regret the polished, nerveless dynamism of modern performance metal. The endless jumble sale of electronics and safety that comforts the commute but anaesthetises the element of cold and refreshing fear that should come with piloting something that sounds like a mountain falling over. The Lucra is not a complex recipe – it chews with its metaphorical mouth open – but it has been executed with panache and care. And it reflects the passion of the man behind it. In lots of ways, a Lucra literally is Luke Richards: an amalgam of two of the best bits of a pair of cultures that both share the same passions, but come from completely different ideologies. The best kind of hybrid. 

And, as ever, there’s new stuff in the pipeline. As with all creative people, Richards has decided to branch out a bit with another mishmash of British and American iconography. He’s started importing Land Rover Defenders to California, and giving them a bit of a power-up. Straight restorations and upgrades are available, but the really interesting versions take a farm-proof Defender and replace the inevitably wonky chassis with a laser-cut version that can accommodate Fox Racing coilover long-travel suspension. That’s right, the same stuff fitted to Ford’s American-market, legend-in-its-own-lunchtime Raptor. Mate that to a “variety of engine options” (it wouldn’t take much of a leap to figure out what they might be), and you’ve got a Defender with Baja-esque ability and an American V8 heart. A trophy truck Land Rover Defender, complete with full military-spec wiring and pretty much any other high-tech option you care to budget for. If the Defenders turn out as exciting and interesting as Lucra’s sports-car efforts, suddenly the word “hybrid” gets an altogether more positive spin.