Fancy yourself becoming the next Henry Ford by inventing a car that will forever change the course of our culture? While coming up with a vehicle that can eclipse the impact of the Model T may be a bit ambitious, BMW is offering the opportunity for almost anyone with the right skills to become a vehicle designer and to help the company create the car of the future.

"Increasing urbanization, changing infrastructures and environmental pollution call for mobility solutions that strike a balance between global requirements and individual needs," the German luxury automaker says. To conceptualize the urban vehicle of the future, BMW is partnering with crowd-sourcing mavens Local Motors to invite its pool of more than 20,000 designers, engineers, auto enthusiasts and creative thinkers to a virtual think tank via a contest called the Urban Driving Experience Challenge.

It offers the chance for winners to pocket $30,000 in prize money that BMW is putting up, and the overall winner will get a trip to Germany to meet with executives at the company's headquarters in Munich.

Two phases of the contest are planned. The first one kicked off Sept. 25 and runs through Oct. 16, and a second “challenge” will commence in mid-November.

Phoenix-based Local Motors will tap into its Internet community, called The Forge, to brainstorm and develop unique ideas for the vehicle. As proof that this is more than just a pipe dream for creative people with too much time on their hands, computer-assisted design experience and a broadband connection, Local Motors has already successfully built its first crowd-sourced, commercially available vehicle, the Rally Fighter.

BMW sees the Urban Driving Experience Challenge as a means of injecting fresh ideas into its corporate car-creating structure and to produce an actual car, not just a concept. “The results will undoubtedly be very valuable for BMW," Christoph Grote, managing director of Research and Technology, said in a statement, “and we eagerly anticipate the extent to which we can channel the expertise we acquire into our series-production processes.”

For more details on the contest and to sign up, check out Local Motors’ Urban Driving Experience Challenge website.

[Source: Gizmag]