Re: Electric Kit Car
There are a lot of kits still for sale, though the market was hugely disrupted when the IVA (Individual Vehicle Approval, later rteplaced by Single Vehicle Approval) system was brought in some years ago. Previously, there were a few basic construction and use regs. to comply with, and your car had to pass a regular MOT test. Now, it's much more complicated and expensive. It was never particularly clear why the changes were introduced - kit cars never had a history of major safety issues, indeed insurance from specialists was usually much cheaper than for regular cars.
The vast majority of kits, then and now, were based on common running gear, but with custom chassis as well as bodywork. Most popular kits are of the single donor variety, meaning they only need parts from one standard car, plus the kit components and various accessories, to build.
Whether you regard the use of a subframe as 'not a proper kit car' is a different argument. A lot of kits used to use the mini subframes, for example, as they provide an easy and safe way to attach most of the running gear to a new body. I believe the Mini-Marcos would have been an example of such a car, which could hardly be regarded as 'not a proper kit car', given the involvement of Jem March and Frank Costin in it's development and it's success at Le Mans. Not many would use the VW platform chassis as a base, since that was usually the most rust-prone part of the donor.
Personally, I have built several single donor kit cars - a 30's roadster based on Morris Marina running gear which was surprisingly good to own and drive as day-to-day transport - a pickup truck based on Cortina parts (okay, with a larger Granada 2.8 V6 engine) which was also extremely practical - and a Marina/MGB based AC Ace replica. All involved custom chassis and bodywork to transform pretty dull but dependable rust buckets into much more interesting, eye catching, practical and fun vehicles.