Hudson's Blog

Sep 3, 2007 - The Ultimate Car Dream!

Surfing through CarSpace the other day, I ran across this guy who is discussing his dream of starting a car company. He video blog addresses the people who have pointed him in different directions to design is production car. I admire his dedication to his dream and I wish him all the luck in the world. Because he'll need it.

I've been a car person since I could express my fanaticism around age two. I started designing cars around age six. And I started designing my first car company when I was 10 or 12. Yes, I share the ultimate dream of many car fans. And I still have it today.

But I have become realistic about my dream.

Since I first developed the germ of an idea to build a car company, my car company has changed many times. Sometimes it changed because of sudden pangs of Henry Fordism where I wanted to build the car for the masses. Sometimes it changed because I wanted to build a better sports car than anyone else and put my name up there alongside Enzo and Ferruccio and the Brothers Maserati.

(By the way, "Hudson" is just a pseudonym. I know there was a car with that name.)

A few years ago, I was about to be in-between jobs. My employer was eliminating my office and I was going to need a new means of support. Having spent some time in the publishing field, I thought I'd start my own car magazine. I found the niche I wanted to cover and I was sure that I had access to some great writers. I was missing many parts of this puzzle and quite a bit of the knowledge that I knew I'd need, so I asked for help. After a few calls, I had David E. Davis on the phone.

Mr. Davis launched Automobile magazine back in 1986. It will probably be the last successful mainstream car magazine launched in print form. He seemed like the best person to ask about this publishing attempt. And, besides, he was about to be "in between jobs" as well and maybe he'd be interested.

Our discussion started with my idea. I wanted to launch an upscale car magazine; a sort of coffee table magazine like Architectural Digest or Cigar Afficianado for car fans. Something that would make Automobile look plebian, no offense to Mr. Davis' magazine.

Mr. Davis continued by telling me just how much his magazine cost to launch. In 1986, Automobile cost $11 million to start. ELEVEN MILLION DOLLARS?!?! I figured I'd rather start a car company with that money.

And so it went. I planned out a car company that I could launch for far less than that $11 million price tag. I mentally designed a car. Ran spreadsheets to show the cost and projected sales of the company. In a perfect world, the company would be profitable in six years and would be debt free in ten.

Alas, life got in the way and I moved the "company" to the back burner again. And it's not the only one back there. I have two or three other, ranging to $1 billion, companies sitting on that back burner. I'm counting on a Powerball win to move them to the front burners.

But I was born in the wrong era. Had I been born 100 years earlier, I could have started a car company. Today, however, it's nearly impossible.

A century ago, it was the wild west. There were no rules and anyone with the ability to tinker could put together a car or truck and get it into production. In the US alone, there were three or four thousand vehicle manufacturers prior to World War II. And nearly every concept was put into those vehicles.

Radial engines, sleeve-valve designs, electric power, steam power, and various other engine designs hit the market. Three-wheelers, four-wheelers, six-wheelers, and even eight-wheelers were put into the field. Today, the car industry consists of simply internal combustion engines (diesel or gas) placed in the front (for the most part) of the car and driving (typically) two wheels. Nothing radical there.

Sure, there are oddities like McLaren's highly exotic F1 which sat three with the driver in the middle. Mazda has their rotary (unlike radial) engine in the RX8. And a limited number of hybrid powertrains which use the tried-and-true gasoline engine as their primary motive force.

But all of this homogenization is a necessary after effect of the world of vehicle regulations. In 1900, there were very few laws stating what could or could not be put into a car. Today, the car is rigidly defined and must conform to regluations that differ from country to country and even from state to state. Many of these regulations are improvements that I could not imagine a car not having. They also prevent the "small guy" from entering the industry.

In the past 40 years, regulations have required seatbelts and air bags and crumple zones to protect us. Lighting and steering and braking improvements have made it much easier to drive safely. Emissions controls have literally removed 99% of the pollution from exhaust gases. And Europe is even working on protecting pedestrians from impacts. All of this comes at a cost.

Two generations ago, car manufacturers radically changed their products each year. You could tell a 1955 Chevrolet from a 1956 Chevrolet from a 1957 or 1958 model because each one was quite distinct. Today, manufacturers need four to five years to get their money out of their investment. You can still tell differences in many cars by the detail changes, but, for the most part, the first year of a model is very similar to the fifth year of that model.

And if multi-billion-dollar, multi-national corporations can't afford to change a million-unit vehicle more often than every five years, what makes you think that a start-up company could even afford to build ONE model? This is why it is generally believed that the automotive world will soon consolidate to six car companies.

As he was preparing to leave Chrysler, Bob Lutz was talking over dinner to a bunch of journalists. He said that technology is improving to the point that automotive start-ups could work. I was quite skeptical but a year later, he outlined his "virtual" car company when he announced his plan to revive the Cunningham. I read all of the articles and I believe he's right and it is possible, even if Lutz abandoned the idea and went back to the big corporate automakers.

All of these positive ideas followed by negative results has made me a skeptic. It has been my job to follow the goings-on in the industry so when someone would announce that they planned to launch a new automaker, I'd look into them.

I've been given business plans for amateur attempts to lauch new car companies over the years. Some are basic, some are laughable. Oddly enough, the laughable ones are from the more experienced of these entrepreneurs. And then there are the companies that actually build a concept or prototype.

There have been obvious flops along the way. The American Vector company was doomed when it took 15 years to get their first car produced, but the surprising part was that it took another decade for the company to fully collapse. A revival of the Packard nameplate seemed to be quite ambitious and ended with a failed auction of all the company's assets on Ebay. Romano Artioli's attempt to revive Bugatti was even more ambitious but also collapsed under the weight of all that hype. But the best ones are the ones who aim to change the world.

The most memorable of this type was called Build-to-Order. Talk about hype, this company was going to do everything different. From building cars within days of an order to eliminating traditional dealerships, BTO was going to be the wave of the future.

As a car nut and a fan of the underdog, I want these guys to win. But when you look into them, any reasonable mind will say that it's just not going to happen. BTO was this way...and has become a minor footnote in history. And I've got a list of dozens more in just the past 30 years. This doesn't count the hundreds or thousands of companies that American Cars Since 1775 called "cars that never turned a wheel" over the last 120 years or more.

It's a great dream to have. I hope that some of them make it to the prototype stage. And that one of them actually makes it into production. This industry will always have conglomerates like Hyundai who decide to go into the automotive business, but I'm always rooting for another Lotus or Porsche who turns their automotive expertise into a road-going product that car fans can desire...and perhaps even drive.

One day, maybe, I'll sit down with a multi-multi millionaire who likes cars and we'll discuss some of my concepts. And then, just maybe, my dream can come true. And maybe one of these blogs will win a Pulitzer Prize. Perhaps I'll find a cure for cancer. And then onto world hunger and world peace and intergalactic...

3:40 pm | Categories: dreams, manufacturing, vector, packard, bugatti, porsche, lotus, bob lutz, chevrolet, mclaren, mazda, david e. davis Comments (2) | Permalink | Alert Administrator

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Aug 26, 2007 - Oddballs and Orphans

Walk down the rows of cars at any large car show and you’ll see the same cars. Not usually the actual same cars, but typically the standard models and model years show up at every car show.

Go to a hot rod show and you’ll see Model T Fords and 1930s-era Fords, Chevrolets, Dodges, and Willys coupes. Go to the usual old car show and the usual old cars show up including ’55-57 Chevrolets and ’65-66 Mustangs and early Camaros and Corvettes of all vintages. And even “late-model” cruise nights have the same groups of Fox-bodied Mustangs and third-and fourth-generation Camaros and Firebirds as well as the occasional hopped-up Honda Civic or Acura Integra or Mazda RX7.

It’s oh-so-predictable.

When I go to a car show, I always look for the oddballs. I’ll notice the crowds gathered around better-than-new classic Chevrolets or Fords where the discussion is about “a buddy of mine had one” or “my dad drove one of these.” Reminiscing like that is great and I’m glad they enjoy that.

It doesn’t help that I had a car before any of my buddies did when I was younger. It also doesn’t help that none of my buddies (or my father for that matter) were “car people.” And when my buddies did get their first cars, they were 1967 Ford F-Series pickups or 1978 Chevrolet Monzas or 1979 Chrysler Cordobas…nothing to write home about. Even my first car was not noteworthy.

Over the years, my taste in cars has become more honed. I still like almost anything on four wheels…and sometimes that criterion is not locked in. But to arouse my attention, you need to dangle something different and odd in front of my face.

A few weeks ago, I was walking to my car after a day of car judging when I noticed two guys ogling a car. It was a very nice late model Aston Martin but they were overlooking the Sunbeam Imp sitting right next to it. I asked the guys standing there, “sure it’s a $150,000 Aston Martin, but does it hold a candle to a classic Sunbeam?” They laughed.

Sure, the Aston Martin is very rare, but when was the last time you even saw a picture of a Sunbeam car?

If you go through my photographs, you'll see some oddballs and orphans. The stranger the better is my opinion. And a really good car show, in my view, is one where there are models and brands of cars that I have never seen in person.

Most concours events will have beautiful and rare cars of the Classic era. Duesenbergs and Bugattis and Hispano-Suizas and the like. The engineering on these vehicles can only be rivaled by the spectacular coachwork build atop their large frames. They definitely catch the attention of all attendees, and I am among the people impressed by the craftsmanship that went into them.

But I'm looking for real oddballs.

Ever see an El Morocco? There were 27 built in 1956 and 10 built in 1957. I had read about these in books, but it was a concours event that I attended a number of years ago where I first saw one in person. To most people, it just looks like a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air, but Chevrolet fanatics will note that the grille has less trim and the tail fins are from a Cadillac. And it's not badged as a Chevrolet...it is an El Morocco.

A friend of mine and I had a discussion about rare vehicles we've seen. He stated that he had worked on or seen at shows a high percentage of the total production of MGA fixed head coupes. His percentage was around 1% of the 1,000 built, which is impressive. My reply was that I had personally seen six of the about 40 Vectors ever built.

That's the kind of thing a fan of oddballs looks for...rarity. During a tour of a restoration shop, I spotted an old chassis. The large car had a milled block straight-eight engine and obviously dated to the 1920s or early 1930s. Since it had no body, I guessed that it was a sports car of the era.

My tour guide filled me in on this rarity. He said it was a Pedroso. I pride myself on knowing many different (and rare) brand names, but this one had me stumped. He continued that Pedrosos were built to race (at LeMans, if memory serves corrrectly). And there were TWO built. One of the two sank with a ship crossing the Atlantic and this was the sole survivor. A few years later, I was part of a tour of the storage room at the Petersen Museum when our tour guide unveiled a car that had everyone (mostly seasoned historians) mystified. The tour guide told us that this was a Pedroso, and it turned out that it was the same car I had seen years before but now with its body attached.

As recently as today, my friend and I were surfing ebay in the "others" category for these types of oddities. He sent me a listing for a Muntz Jet and then wondered how rare it was. According to my research, the numbers are disputed by it seems that fewer than 200 were built and fewer than 50 have been located. And all of this just makes he and I want the car more.

I've snapped pictures of AMC Spirits  and Kaiser Darrins found at car shows, primarily because they stand out as orphans, which makes them stand out among the Ford Thunderbirds and Chevrolet Corvettes that seem to populate most car shows. But when I find a Checker Superba or Zimmer Golden Spirit or a Walter truck, I have found a memorable car show.

Come to a car show with me...let's find some of these treasures!

8:58 pm | Categories: car shows, oddballs, orphans, aston martin, duesenberg, bugatti, hispano-suiza, el morocco, vector, pedroso, checker, zimmer, walter, amc, kaiser Comments (4) | Permalink | Alert Administrator

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