Automotive racing is a grueling endeavor, a test of one’s mental and physical prowess to push an engineered masterpiece to its limit. This is all the more true of 24 hour endurance races where teams tag team to get the most laps of a circuit in over a 24 hour period. The format pushes cars and drivers to the very limit. Doing so on a $500 budget as presented by the 24 hours of Lemons makes this all the more impressive!

Of course, racing on a $500 budget is difficult to say the least. All the expected Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) safety requirements are still in place, including roll cage, seats and fire extinguisher. However, brakes, wheels, tires and safety equipment are not factored into the cost of the car, which is good because an FIA racing seat can run well in excess of the budget. Despite the name, most races are twelve to sixteen hours across two days, but 24 hour endurance races are run. The very limiting budget and amateur nature of the event has created a large amount of room for teams to get creative with car restorations and race car builds.

One such team we had the chance of speaking to goes by the name 24 Hours of Le-Mines. Their build is a wonderful mishmash of custom fabrication and affordable parts. It’s built from a restored 1999 NA Miata complete with rusted frame and all! Power is handled by a rebuilt 302 Mustang engine of indeterminate age.

The stock Miata brakes seem rather small for a race car, but are plenty for a car of its weight. Suspension is an Amazon special because it only has to work for 24 hours. The boot lid (or trunk if you prefer) is held down with what look to be over-sized RC car pins. Nestled next to the PVC pipe inlet pipe is a nitrous oxide canister — we don’t know if it’s functional or for show, but we like it nonetheless. The scrappy look is completed with a portion of the road sign fabricated into a shifter cover.

The team is unsure if the car will end up racing, but odds are if you are reading Hackaday, you care more about the race cars then the actual racing. Regardless, we hope to see this Miata in the future!

This is certainly not the first time we have covered 24 hour endurance engineering, like this solar powered endurance plane.

Imagine a bare-bones electric pickup: it’s the size of an old Hilux, it seats two, and the bed fits a full sheet of plywood. Too good to be true? Wait until you hear that the Slate Pickup is being designed for DIY repairability and modification, and will sell for only $20,000 USD, after American federal tax incentives.

There are a few things missing: no infotainment system, for one. Why bother, when almost everyone has a phone and Bluetooth speakers are so cheap? No touch screen in the middle of the dash also means the return of physical controls for the heat and air conditioning.

There is no choice in colors, either. To paraphrase Henry Ford, the Slate comes in any color you want, as long as it’s grey. It’s not something we’d given much though to previously, but apparently painting is a huge added expense for automakers. Instead, the truck’s bodywork is going to be injection molded plastic panels, like an old Saturn coupe. We remember how resilient those body panels were, and think that sounds like a great idea. Injection molding is also a less capital-intensive process to set up than traditional automotive sheet metal stamping, reducing costs further.

That being said, customization is still a big part of the Slate. The company intends to sell DIY vinyl wrap kits, as well as a bolt-on SUV conversion kit which customers could install themselves. The plan is to have a “Slate University” app that would walk owners through maintaining their own automobile, a delightfully novel choice for a modern carmaker.

Of course, it’s all just talk unless Slate can make good on their promises. With rumors that Jeff Bezos is interested in investing, maybe they can pull it off and produce what could be a Volkswagen for 21st century America.

Interested readers can check out the Slate Motors website, and preorder for only $50 USD. For now, Slate is only interested in doing business within the United States, but we can hope they inspire copycats elsewhere. There’s no reason similar vehicles couldn’t be made anywhere from Alberta to Zeeland, if the will was there.

What do you think? Is this the perfect hackermobile, or have Slate fallen short? Let us know in the comments.

We’ve covered electric trucks before, but they were just a bit bigger, and some of them didn’t use batteries.