Yellow Jacket's Company Sells Easiest Kit Car in the World for American Drivers
By: Chris Quirk, Photography courtesy of Exomotive | Categories: Featured Stories
The alumnus-founded business provides Americans with the easiest kit car in the world to build for around $10K.
A self-described adrenaline junkie, Kevin Patrick, Mgt 05, is game for just about anything, including motor sports, canopy piloting, or some other pulse-raising pastime.
Now the former member of the Georgia Tech Skydiving Club is on a mission to bring the thrill of open-cockpit racing—or just tooling around town if you like—to car hobbyists of all levels.
Patrick’s company, Exomotive, based in Atlanta, manufactures frame and body kits for his custom version of the Exocet, an exoskeletal sports car, which Patrick calls the easiest kit car in the world to build. Get a drivetrain from one of the thousands of Mazda Miata donor cars that have been mothballed, drop it into the frame, and you’re ready for the road or track. “This is an open-topped, lightweight car, and it’s extremely fun to drive,” says Patrick, who estimates the average cost for a complete car to be around $10,000. Not cheap, but not out of range for a lot of serious hobbyists.
Long a racing enthusiast, Patrick became enamored with the original Exocet, built by Mills Extreme Vehicles in Staunton, England. Patrick decided to retool it for the left-driver-seat U.S. market. “I was interested in the concept of utilizing all of the design components and driveline of the Miata, because it’s about the most popular two-seater car in the world, and they’ve made so many of them over the years.”
Patrick built his first Exocet in his garage, and was soon zipping around Atlanta, catching the eyes of pedestrians and fellow drivers.
Warren van Nus, ME 12, first learned of Patrick’s enterprise when he came across an article with a video on the Jalopnik website showing Patrick’s Excocet slowly crumpling under the bumper of an SUV that was being backed out of a gas station by an unwitting driver. “I recognized the gas station as being in the Atlanta area. Curious, I looked up Exomotive, reached out to Kevin, and coordinated a meeting at his shop,” says van Nus.
Van Nus, who was a member of Georgia Tech Motorsports and Georgia Tech Solar Racing, joined Exomotive, and partnered with Patrick to redesign the Exocet for the U.S. market, and improve the build experience for hobbyists. “The goal was to marry the body work and the chassis in one piece, and reduce the weight. That’s the magic sauce, and we ended up saving anywhere from 700 to 900 pounds. Subtracting weight makes you faster everywhere,” says Patrick. And while the exoskeletal Exocet has exposed tubes and wheels that increase drag, Patrick estimates that with the right Miata driveline and configuration, the Exomotive Exocets can hit the 120-mph range. “The Exocet can be quite a nice track weapon.”
"It did zero to 60 in 2.8 seconds,” Patrick says. “It feels like the fastest golf cart you’ve ever been in."
Patrick has also developed a prototype for an electric model of the Exocet with the help of Ben Horst, ME 16, using the guts of a Tesla Model S and its 52-kWh battery pack. This car can move. “It did zero to 60 in 2.8 seconds,” Patrick says. “It feels like the fastest golf cart you’ve ever been in.” The release of the Electrocet, as the duo dubbed it, is on hold as they work out safety procedures for the build. “If you touch the wrong thing or drop your wrench on the wrong spot with these high voltage batteries, it can kill you immediately,” he says. “Most of the people putting these cars together are typical folks looking to have some fun, so we are going to make sure the car is safe.”
The Exomotive Exocet has generated a community of hobbyists and racers who share tips and gather for events, including a Facebook Exocet Owners Club. Patrick also regularly organizes track day events for Exocet owners at raceways like Atlanta Motorsports Park.
The experience of driving the Exocet is categorically different from the typical driving experience, says Patrick; thus the allure. “You can certainly build lightweight Miatas or other cars, but when you take the top off, so to speak, without the pillars in front of you, it’s much more like a motorcycle,” he says. “It’s very different and quite mind-blowing for some people, especially when you get to the higher speeds. They’ve never experienced anything like that.”
