Automotive News - February 12, 2018 - v2 - 25

SUBARU OF AMERICA

BRICKLIN
continued from Page 22

we can't get this changed, I've got to go back
and dismantle the company.

and chairman of Fuji Heavy Industries]. I had
always felt good in his company. And he was
powerful. So we're at this dinner, and the music is blasting - blasting like an earthquake.
And we're jet-lagged and exhausted, and
there are drinks, and we're smoking - Marlboros - like chimneys, like everyone did back
in those days - and I get such a headache.

50 YEARS

and says, "What are you going to do?" I said,
"Be prepared, because this could cause a tremendous amount of not-niceness."

The company that sold the 360, right?
So the contract you're now negotiating
was a different contract?
In 1968 - February, I think it was - we
signed the contract to bring in the 360. We received prior to that something like three cars
in 1967, before we signed. But [after the Consumer Reports article] we had stopped buying
360s. We just stopped. The new contract superseded the old one. It was not an extension
of the old contract in any way.

They wanted to withdraw the brand from
the U.S. temporarily and try again later.
Yes. Nothing is working. I used the same,
logical arguments, over and over: They needed continuity. They couldn't fail the dealers
and expect to come back. They needed to continue learning about the U.S. market. Wow -
just thinking about it, I can feel that headache.

What happened next?
Now, I don't think it's OK to insult people,
but I did something that was totally out of
character. I leaned across the table to Mr.
Ohara and this, this - volume of stuff just
came out. The gist of what I told him was,
"Not going forward now would cause a worse
problem for you than the war ever did!"
Harvey is practically hiding under the table.
If I had an employee who talked that way to
somebody, I would have fired them. But
when I was all finished, [Ohara] said, "You
have the contract."

If Fuji Heavy said no, how did you get
them to say yes?
It all came down to one final dinner, with
Mr. [Eiichi] Ohara [who was later president

What was their response?
They told us, "Sorry, the car's not ready." We
had already been there 400,000 times, and we
knew the car was ready. Harvey turns to me

What do you think changed his mind?
I think he could sense - how shall I say it?
- the sincerity of the desperation.
Suddenly, we were the heroes of the world.

Harvey Lamm, left, and Malcolm
Bricklin are still in the autos game.

Where
are they
now?

alcolm Bricklin and Harvey Lamm have slowed
down a step or two, but
neither is ready to fully

retire.
Bricklin, 78, is working on yet another startup, Visionary Vehicles.
The company is developing the
Bricklin 3EV, a two-seat, batterypowered three-wheeler that he says
will arrive in 2019.
Never shy about making audacious
claims, Bricklin says the EV3 will
have "supercar" styling but cost only
around $25,000. "It's got a wide front,
side-by-side seating - you'll have
the most fun ever."
Lamm left Subaru of America after
Fuji Heavy Industries bought out the
company in 1990.
He managed his own investments
until 1996, then was CEO of VINtek
Corp., a privately held company in
Philadelphia that provided electronic lien and titling services to auto
lenders. Dealertrack Technologies
Inc. acquired VINtek in 2013 for
$53.4 million.
Today, at 82, he is an advocate for
natural-gas-powered vehicles. He
was a co-founder of VNG.co, in Blue
Bell, Pa, in 2011. VNG is developing a
compressed natural gas fueling infrastructure for fleets and retail customers.
"Natural gas is the cheapest fossil
fuel, and it is a domestic fuel," Lamm
says. "You can improve fuel economy, it's a geopolitically stable alternative to gasoline, and you can get it
at a gas station."
- Jim Henry

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FEBRUARY 12, 2018 * 25
Then we started negotiation of the contract
with Mr. Ohara [especially the duration]. ...
He said, "All right, 25 years." But I said, "No, I
need perpetual." He said, "But in other markets, we never say perpetual. Can we say it,
and you just don't tell anybody?" I said, "It's a
publicly traded company. It'll be in the first
contract - end of story." And we got perpetual. That really changed the relationship.
Why did you go public, anyway, with all
the burden of reporting?
We realized we needed more equity to get
the funding, so we decided to go public. But
nobody would take us public.
We drew it up so it was intra-Pennsylvania,
under this special thing for companies in
Pennsylvania - it couldn't be bought or traded anywhere else. After two years, you could
trade it anywhere. I think we were the only
public company to use that format that didn't
go bankrupt. a

http://www.VNG.co http://www.continental-automotive.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Automotive News - February 12, 2018 - v2