Malcolm Bricklin's next bright idea

DETROIT --Malcolm Bricklin has been pretty quiet since a high-profile 2004 quest to sell Chinese cars in the U.S. skidded into court in a slew of lawsuits, some of which are still being litigated.

The man — who was once described as having a mind that works like a machine gun — is now 78 and relies on a cane to get around. But he is pulling the trigger again with a plan to turn high-end car dealers into high-end art dealers.

Bricklin wants dealers to give him $2 million. For that sum, they’ll get stock in his company and have the rights to sell two things:

1. From their stores, the Bricklin 3EV, a $25,000, three-wheeled, battery-powered two-seater. The vehicle, Bricklin claims, could be ready for sale in two years. Customers, he said, will “test drive” the ritzy-looking vehicle using virtual reality machines installed in a “pod” on dealers’ used-car lots. That pod, by the way, looks a bit like the saucer-shaped ship from the campy 1960s TV show “Lost in Space.”

2. From a separate gallery away from the dealership, high-end artwork by known artists, works that have a guaranteed value. And money is routed to the artists when the works are resold.

Is there a catch? Well, yeah. This is Bricklin we’re talking about.

Dealers can’t just invest in the car. They have to pony up $2 million for both the car and the art gallery, or no deal, Bricklin said.

No one but Bricklin could dream up something like this and get dealers not only to listen but to invest. The first check from a New York dealer has been deposited. Bricklin said four other dealers are on board. He needs 95 more dealers to buy in to fund the $200 million project.

But if you know Bricklin, this is what he does. And the only question is the same old question: Can he pull it off?

Dan Panoz, who runs Panoz Engineering Services, in Hoschton, Ga., about 90 minutes northeast of Atlanta, has done some preliminary engineering and design work for Bricklin’s three-wheeled car.

The company, Panoz said, is not yet under contract to complete the project for Bricklin. But his outfit, part of a group of companies affiliated with race car designer and engineer Don Panoz, who is Dan Panoz’s father, could manage the project and have the Bricklin 3EV ready by 2019.

“It’s tight, and it is a push,” said Dan Panoz. “Absolutely it can be done in two years, but not with a lot of product changes.”

Panoz said he doesn’t get the feelng Bricklin will make many changes. “He has a direction he wants to take us in,” he said. “He is an old-school go-getter, and he’s aggressive in the area he wants to go into.”

Bricklin visited Automotive News last week and reminisced about a long career in the auto industry: a six decade, pothole-filled journey that has seen him several times win and then lose big fortunes, many financed by new-car dealers.

No chapter in Bricklin’s unorthodox life has been by the book. That includes his start in business in Orlando with a chain of hardware stores he founded when he was barely out of his teens and later sold for a sum that reportedly made him a millionaire.

In the mid-1960s, Bricklin, along with business partner Harvey Lamm, founded Subaru of America, no easy feat. Fuji Heavy Industries, as Subaru of America’s parent company was then known, felt its vehicles were not right for America and did not want to begin U.S. operations until it had a suitable car.

But Bricklin, using his considerable energy, charm and charisma, convinced Fuji executives otherwise. Bricklin counts Subaru as one of his proudest achievements. It is celebrating its 50th year in America amid record sales.

After exiting Subaru, Bricklin’s charisma and sales skills persuaded the flamboyant premier of New Brunswick, Canada, Richard Hatfield, to finance a sports car to take on the Chevrolet Corvette.

The made-in-Canada Bricklin SV-1 appeared in 1974 with sexy gull-wing doors, a roaring American Motors 360-cubic-inch V-8 engine and more problems than an algebra book. After just more than 2,800 cars were built, the project died when New Brunswick residents pressured Hatfield into cutting off funding to help fix the car’s technical and cosmetic problems. The SV-1 adventure left Bricklin practically broke. No money, no problem for Bricklin. A few years later, he was back with new plans.

His other projects included taking over distribution of Fiat’s 124 Spider and X1/9 in the 1980s and importing the $3,990 Yugo subcompact. He also built and sold electric bicycles in the 1990s. A decade ago came the failed effort to sell Chinese-built Chery automobiles in the United States. The deal collapsed, and all the dealers who anteed up were given refunds, Bricklin says.

Bricklin, who lives in Monroe, N.Y., two hours north of Manhattan, said he became interested in the business aspect of the art world when his wife took up painting after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But he quickly realized that the art world is an inefficient business and a risky investment for art buyers. So he started thinking like a car dealer and wanted to expand inventory for the sellers and lower risk for the buyers.

“If I had 100 galleries in the United States that would sell art from $10,000 and up and connected them all with a monitor, so when you walked into any of the galleries you would not only see the 20 artists in that gallery, you would see the 2,000 artists, I would have $1 billion worth of inventory,” Bricklin said.

He started speaking with luxury car dealers about investing in his art gallery idea and then realized that buyers of high-end cars are also frequently art aficionados. “I decided that car dealers should be the ones that invested,” said Bricklin. “High-end cars and high-end art really do go together.”

Bill Prior, who has been working with Bricklin on and off for three decades, is again on the payroll of Visionary Vehicles, the Bricklin company that is rolling out the project.

“Dealers are under a huge amount of pressure,” said Prior, “from legislators, regulators, customer advocates, new market entrants and even from new technology. On top of that, they have the pressures of plateauing new-car sales and declining margins. The cost to create and keep a customer is the only thing that is actually accelerating.”

The art connection to the Bricklin 3EV is, Prior said, a way for dealers to “diversify their portfolios. And bring some fun back into the automobile business.” Bricklin said he doesn’t expect his car to share showroom space with existing brands, hence the need for the parking lot pod. “Car manufacturers are not happy about another brand in their showroom. We came up with an idea to put a pod in the used-car lot. You will sit in the seat, and you will be able to drive the car on any road in the world,” Bricklin said.

What makes this deal different, according to Bricklin, is that he is applying all the lessons, from his successes and especially his failures, to this project. During Bricklin’s visit to Automotive News, he reeled off a list of experienced auto industry executives he said are involved the project. That list includes Ron Harbour, the factory efficiency guru whose influential Harbour Report helped automakers lower production costs.

Today, Harbour’s business, Harbour Consulting, is owned by global consulting firm Oliver Wyman, where he is a partner. Harbour confirmed that he has had informal discussions with Bricklin on his Bricklin 3EV project but said he is not a Bricklin employee — despite being listed by Bricklin as part of the Visionary Vehicles team. Harbour said any work he does in an official capacity would be part of a contract with Oliver Wyman.

Meanwhile, Brian Miller, dealer principal of Manhattan Motorcars, a high-end store that sells exotic makes with price tags deep into the six figures, confirmed he has invested in Bricklin’s art and cars project. And surprisingly, he doesn’t seem to care if the Bricklin EV3 comes out on time.

“The art kind of intrigued me. I think it’s a cool idea. The car kind of got thrown in. The cars, whatever. When they come, that’ll be great. We’ll try to sell some, but the art is really how I got involved,” said Miller.

“I think if he can pull off what he wants to do, with his business plan, he’ll be the biggest art distributor in the country, and it will expose art to a lot of people who may want to buy art but are a little intimidated and don’t know how to break in. Malcolm has a lot of novel ideas. He thinks out of the box.”