Soldier/scholar/online auto entrepreneur Jay Rogers was at Johnson & Wales University's Xavier Auditorium Monday to give a lecture as the school's Third Distinguished Visiting Professor.

Rogers is the founder and president of Wareham, Mass.-based Local Motors which builds niche vehicles based on designs that are solicited and developed over the Internet by an international community of designers.

I visited and wrote about Rogers and Local Motors more than a year ago. At the time, his first car, the Rally Fighter, was very much in early development, with a polystyrene skeleton sitting in the company's work shop.

Since then, Rogers and his team completed its construction and recently tested the prototype of the off-road racer on the rough roads of Mexico's Baja Peninsula. The car, designed for desert rallies, is powered by a 3 liter, inline 6, twin turbo BMW clean diesel engine and he said its performance more than met expectations. He also said it turned heads all the way back up to Los Angeles.

Rogers said Local Motors will complete a production plant in Arizona next month and expects to bring the car to market by July. So far, he said the company has orders for 65 cars at $50,000 each and he said he expects to break even with 200 sales. Overall, he sees sales of about 2,000 vehicles.

Rogers likened his company to the "American Idol" format where decisions are made by vote of the international online community rather than by Local Motors' management or a committee at the company.

Asked about future projects, he said the company would be solicited ideas from its online community and could make an announcement at the end of the summer regarding future projects.

Rogers' grandfather owned the Indian Motorcycle Co. He spent nine years serving as an officer in the Marine Corps, including a number of tours in Iraq, and graduated top of his class from the Harvard Business School. He used the prize money to help set up his company.

Peter C.T. Elsworth