Fifteen years ago, on a Kerouac-like solo drive from The Great White North to New Orleans' Mardi Gras, the Chrysler minivan I was using as both transportation and accommodation had to succumb to a roadside motel in Oklahoma due to an impending tornado.
That evening spent nervously eyeballing the storm-warning graphic in the corner of the television screen was a scary first for this rookie roadie. Remembering this gave me an idea on how to handle the latest natural disaster looming on the horizon--serial entrepreneur Malcolm Bricklin.
You may know Malcolm as the former Floridian hardware storeowner who was the first to import Subarus and Yugos into America. That is before legal and financial woes shut him down.
Canadians remember him as our own John DeLorean, mainly for walking off with $20 million of our tax dollars to build a few thousand of his eponymous sports cars. That is before legal and financial woes shut him down...
Have you read the various press releases about Malcolm's latest adventure? The 65-year-old founder of Visionary Vehicles has a "vision" that crappy Chinese-built vehicles are what perspicacious North Americans really want to buy.
My idea inspired by that dark and stormy Oklahoma night? I'm recommending a code, or rating attached to each missive emanating from Visionary. As a public service, let's call it the Bricklin Storm Warning System, or BS Warning for short. Here's how it would work.
For readers who aren't in the market to buy the Brooklyn Bridge, when a Visionary memorandum crosses the news wires, magazine editors can attach a BS Warning rating from 1.0 ("I can dig that") to 10.0 ("Excuse me, I think your pants are on fire").
For instance, Visionary most recently announced the hiring of former Mitsubishi North America CEO, and fellow Canuck, Pierre Gagnon to head up its distribution. With Pierre's potential epitaph reading: "The man who buried Mitsubishi in the U.S. by letting your paperboy lease that EVO he couldn't afford", I have to give an opening BS Warning of 7.0 for this latent disaster-in-the-making.
Another illustration? Visionary outlined an expansive range of new models ranging from coupes to SUVs, to gas/electric hybrids and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. One every two months for three years starting in 2007, and, might Visionary add, all having "Lexus quality". Amongst this plethora of new Bricklins will be a V8 coupe allegedly ready to challenge the BMW 6 Series coupe, but selling for under $25,000.
A 645i competitor? Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles? Whoa, whoa, whoa, Malcolm, baby! Got to give you an 8.5 on the BS Warning System for that divination.
Or what about the request that potential Visionary dealers hand over $10 to $15 million for the rights to get into bed with Malcolm? Visionary is projecting potential sales of 250,000 vehicles in the first year, 1 million by 2011, and topping out at 2 million units, uh, whenever.
And what will these dealers get for handing over their hard-earned cash to Bricklin? According to the same communication, how does a "spacious gallery-like" showroom designed by the architects who did Trump Tower in New York sound? Or a half-mile test track at each dealership? Or the opportunity to "recommend" new dealers and select the North American brand name. Pyramid Motors sounds good to me.
(Which may be all moot, as I'm writing this another release from Bricklin HQ admits that it's okay if new dealers what to use their existing facilities. At last! All those Oldsmobile and Plymouth shops can find a use!)
Considering that it's taken almost 20 years for industrial giant Hyundai to convince skeptical Americans to purchase over 400,000 of their cars in 2004, I'm bestowing a Bo Derek-like 10 rating on the BS Warning System for this bit of preposterous prognostication.
The BS Warning System could help car enthusiasts separate fact from fiction; ability the folks at Visionary seem to be struggling with these days.
I don't doubt that some day Chinese-built cars will be as common on our roads as Korean-built vehicles currently are. Just don't count on Malcolm Bricklin being the person selling us those cars.
Consider yourself warned.
- John LeBlanc is an Ottawa-based automotive critic and publisher of straigh-six.com
That evening spent nervously eyeballing the storm-warning graphic in the corner of the television screen was a scary first for this rookie roadie. Remembering this gave me an idea on how to handle the latest natural disaster looming on the horizon--serial entrepreneur Malcolm Bricklin.
You may know Malcolm as the former Floridian hardware storeowner who was the first to import Subarus and Yugos into America. That is before legal and financial woes shut him down.
Canadians remember him as our own John DeLorean, mainly for walking off with $20 million of our tax dollars to build a few thousand of his eponymous sports cars. That is before legal and financial woes shut him down...
Have you read the various press releases about Malcolm's latest adventure? The 65-year-old founder of Visionary Vehicles has a "vision" that crappy Chinese-built vehicles are what perspicacious North Americans really want to buy.
My idea inspired by that dark and stormy Oklahoma night? I'm recommending a code, or rating attached to each missive emanating from Visionary. As a public service, let's call it the Bricklin Storm Warning System, or BS Warning for short. Here's how it would work.
For readers who aren't in the market to buy the Brooklyn Bridge, when a Visionary memorandum crosses the news wires, magazine editors can attach a BS Warning rating from 1.0 ("I can dig that") to 10.0 ("Excuse me, I think your pants are on fire").
For instance, Visionary most recently announced the hiring of former Mitsubishi North America CEO, and fellow Canuck, Pierre Gagnon to head up its distribution. With Pierre's potential epitaph reading: "The man who buried Mitsubishi in the U.S. by letting your paperboy lease that EVO he couldn't afford", I have to give an opening BS Warning of 7.0 for this latent disaster-in-the-making.
Another illustration? Visionary outlined an expansive range of new models ranging from coupes to SUVs, to gas/electric hybrids and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. One every two months for three years starting in 2007, and, might Visionary add, all having "Lexus quality". Amongst this plethora of new Bricklins will be a V8 coupe allegedly ready to challenge the BMW 6 Series coupe, but selling for under $25,000.
A 645i competitor? Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles? Whoa, whoa, whoa, Malcolm, baby! Got to give you an 8.5 on the BS Warning System for that divination.
Or what about the request that potential Visionary dealers hand over $10 to $15 million for the rights to get into bed with Malcolm? Visionary is projecting potential sales of 250,000 vehicles in the first year, 1 million by 2011, and topping out at 2 million units, uh, whenever.
And what will these dealers get for handing over their hard-earned cash to Bricklin? According to the same communication, how does a "spacious gallery-like" showroom designed by the architects who did Trump Tower in New York sound? Or a half-mile test track at each dealership? Or the opportunity to "recommend" new dealers and select the North American brand name. Pyramid Motors sounds good to me.
(Which may be all moot, as I'm writing this another release from Bricklin HQ admits that it's okay if new dealers what to use their existing facilities. At last! All those Oldsmobile and Plymouth shops can find a use!)
Considering that it's taken almost 20 years for industrial giant Hyundai to convince skeptical Americans to purchase over 400,000 of their cars in 2004, I'm bestowing a Bo Derek-like 10 rating on the BS Warning System for this bit of preposterous prognostication.
The BS Warning System could help car enthusiasts separate fact from fiction; ability the folks at Visionary seem to be struggling with these days.
I don't doubt that some day Chinese-built cars will be as common on our roads as Korean-built vehicles currently are. Just don't count on Malcolm Bricklin being the person selling us those cars.
Consider yourself warned.
- John LeBlanc is an Ottawa-based automotive critic and publisher of straigh-six.com