Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Subaru, Gull Wings & EVs - Malcolm Bricklin’s Empire (Part 1)

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Subaru, Gull Wings & EVs - Malcolm Bricklin’s Empire (Part 1) · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  Break Fix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all
• 0:05
  over the autos sphere, from wrench, turners, and racers to artists, authors,
• 0:09
  designers, and everything in between.
• 0:11
  Our goal is to inspire a new generation of Petrolhead that wonder, a.
• 0:16
  How did they get that job or become that person?
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  The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.
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  Our guest tonight began his career in the automotive industry in
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  the early 1960s when he started importing small cars from Europe and
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  Japan to sell in the United States.
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  In 1968, he founded Subaru of America and helped introduce the
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  Subaru 360 to the American market.
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  The 1970s, Malcolm Bricklin turned his detention to creating his own
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  sports car, the Bricklin Ssv one.
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  The car featured Gulling doors and a fiberglass body and
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  was powered by a V engine.
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  2,854 units were sold before production ceased in 1975.
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  Today, Malcolm remains an active and influential figure in the automotive
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  industry, continuing to explore new ideas and business ventures in the
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  pursuit of his entrepreneurial vision.
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  And he's here tonight to explain to us just exactly what he's been up to.
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  Thanks Don.
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  And with that Malcolm, welcome to Break Fix.
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  Uh, well thank you very much.
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  So Malcolm, like all good break fix stories.
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  Everybody has an origin.
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  So let's talk about how you got into this whole automotive
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  industry growing up in Philly.
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  I mean, personally, I can't think of too many automotive titans that
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  have their origin stories starting in Pennsylvania other than Lee Iacocca.
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  So what sparked your interest in cars and what was the path or paths
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  you took to get out of Pennsylvania?
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  Here's the story.
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  Once upon a time, I decided to move my family from Orlando, Florida, where my
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  wife and my first three kids, a one year old, a three-year old and a five year
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  old, decided we're moving to Philadelphia where I was born and lived till I was
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  10 years old, but I had relatives there.
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  I don't know why I decided.
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  I said, I'm, let's do it now.
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  My wife at the time was absolutely not interested on getting on an airplane.
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  And we happened to have a Corvette with a hatch bath.
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  So picture three kids in the back of the thing and a U-haul it,
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  and of course they truck with all the furnitures coming behind it.
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  I traveled from Orlando, Florida to Philadelphia in a Corvette with my
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  wife and three kids, three little kids.
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  All right.
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  How fun is that?
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  So now we're in Philadelphia and one of the people I get introduced to is a man
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  by the name of David Rosen, who owns Coin operated machines, cigarette machines,
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  jukebox, you name it, that kind of stuff.
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  He an old to me older man.
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  I was in my early twenties and he in the worst way wanted me to, and I was
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  not interested, but I used come by and have some coffee and we talk about stuff
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  and one day he said, I got something and I think you'll be interested in it.
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  What is that?
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  It's a C Box machine.
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  What's the C Box Machine?
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  What it is is a big thing that looks like an egg painted red
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  on the back, on the shell part.
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  And the front has a television set and it's a jukebox.
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  The television set.
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  So now it's M T V before M T V and we go to Corin, where we meet the
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  Innocente Corporation, Innocente Corporation, big equipment, heavy presses.
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  Almost every car company had one or two or 10 or 50.
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  And they also did Morris Minor with their license from England and they did, uh,
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  Loretta Motor scooters and they were building this C Box machine, which they
• 3:27
  thought was going to be a big deal.
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  Everybody who saw it thought it was a big deal.
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  It was one little flaw, but we didn't figure it out yet.
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  We ordered a dozen and they come, and then we realized we don't have film.
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  This is not M T V, we don't have a platform to get any film.
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  And without film, we don't got a jukebox that chose film.
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  So I went off to Hollywood to go get somebody to start paying attention.
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  What a good idea.
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  This is gonna be everywhere.
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  Well, they didn't think so because nobody was gonna give us a hit team
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  of any musicians that are gonna do it.
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  And I got 12.
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  That's my distribution 12 and I'm never gonna get past 12 unless I get somebody to
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  do something and it's gotta be more than one because you get bored pretty fast.
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  The only solution to that was my guy who had all these pieces of equipment
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  and also had a lot of R-rated film, which of course they like seeing
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  in bars and I like seeing 'em too.
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  I just didn't feel like being in the business.
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  So I bowed out.
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  But before I did, I got rid of the 12 with a company called Food Fair that
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  was a food store that was popular in at least the Philadelphia and New York area.
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  And I convinced them they ought to put these machines.
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  On top of the checkout counter have the people who are selling their products,
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  put their commercials in there, pay 'em, whatever the hell they can get from 'em.
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  And when people are waiting in line, they may see something
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  they like and they go get it.
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  That's what point of sale advertising.
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  So I got rid of my 12 and they seemed to like what they had, but
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  that was the end of that program.
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  Now I am sitting home on a Sunday, having a Sunday breakfast with my
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  three kids and my wife eating a lox and bagel, as a matter of fact.
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  And I get a call and it's from in corporation and in Medium English.
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  They tell me they want me to get on a plane tomorrow and come to
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  Milan and don't tell anybody.
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  They'll pick me up at the plane.
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  I won't be going through customs.
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  I think that was before James Mo, but it for sure as hell felt like a James moment.
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  I couldn't wait.
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  I don't know why I'm going.
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  I have no idea why the hell they'd call me and why they'd go to all
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  these secrecy, but I couldn't wait.
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  So I get on a plane and they pick me up and we go someplace and there's a
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  board of directors and a gorgeous room.
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  And I go, what in the heck could this possibly be?
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  And they say to me, we have a problem.
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  Okay, what's your problem?
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  We manufacture ated, a motor scooter.
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  It was very popular one with in the United States because of the
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  movie and all sorts of, yeah.
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  But then mopeds came out and mopeds are now selling in.
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  You forget about scooters are now happening in the United States.
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  We have 25,000 of 'em sitting in Long Island.
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  Financially, it's no big deal.
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  I mean, you're talking about scooters sold for a couple hundred dollars back
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  then they said, that's not our worry.
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  But for some reason it has gotten out and it's extremely
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  embarrassing for us and the board.
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  And it doesn't matter what it takes.
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  We gotta get rid of 'em and we want you to do it.
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  And I said, well, you just picked the worst guy in the universe to
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  go do that because I never had one.
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  My parents wouldn't let me have one.
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  I couldn't have a motorbike.
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  And you're telling me I should go help you sell the damn thing.
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  I have zero knowledge except I wanted one.
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  That's it.
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  That's as far as I go.
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  Well, we have a problem.
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  We don't know Anybody else we can ask?
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  I said, well, I, I'm telling you, you are asking the wrong guy.
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  I would love to do it for, I just dunno where I would even start.
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  Would you do us a favor?
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  Would you go back and go look at the place?
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  We have two guys working there.
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  Would you tell us what you recommend?
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  Great.
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  So I go out to Long Island.
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  I meet two people who are nice gentlemen from Italy and speak.
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  Broken English.
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  I mean, they're having a good time, but they're not selling anything
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  because if you want one, you gotta call 'em up and beg 'em just
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  about if you can find them at all.
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  So I go back to Italy, I said, I have no other suggestion, but you'd be
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  better off with nobody because it is not the way you sell vehicles in the
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  United States when nobody wants 'em.
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  I said, it's more of a hard sell, and I, I wouldn't email where
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  to start to tell you the truth.
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  And if there's anything I can do for you, I'll be very happy to do it for you.
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  No, no, no, no.
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  You can't leave make us any kind of deal at all.
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  I'm thinking, what can I say that would let them know it would be
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  stupid for them to pursue me?
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  Not that I didn't wanna do it, I just didn't have the slightest idea.
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  So I said, okay, I want $5,000 a week and I want an office in new, a one
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  year contract, no matter what happens.
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  Okay?
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  I'm going, do you understand?
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  I'm going to go to New York every day.
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  We have an office in New York and we have a secretary, so you can
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  have the secretary in the office.
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  Great.
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  So you know what I'm gonna do?
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  I'm gonna read papers and then I'm gonna go to lunch and I'm gonna go
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  back and I'm gonna try to figure out, I wonder what I would do if I,
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  these were mine and I'm telling you I don't have the slightest idea now.
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  Be clear.
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  Okay, great.
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  So I go out and I buy myself a used rolls for about 67,000 new ones.
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  Cost about 29, 30 plus.
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  I bought one for that price off the showroom for, and I got myself a driver.
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  And every morning in Philadelphia, I'd come down in my pajamas with the
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  pillow and my suit and tie in, go to sleep in the back of the rolls.
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  When they got at the end of the freeway near Dozi Freeway, I would,
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  they would pull into a gator station.
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  I would go and put my suit and tie, go to the time and life building.
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  That's where he would park.
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  Hello, Mr.
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  Brooklyn.
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  Now I was living my novels that I used to read.
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  You'd go into a big building in New York and the guy would know who you are.
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  I go upstairs to the office, a very nice Italian young lady is my
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  secretary, and I read all the papers.
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  Now it's time for lunch.
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  Where am I gonna go to lunch?
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  21.
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  A little more than I wanna do stuffing park just because, but right next
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  door is a place called Tch Shores.
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  And Tut Shores had a table, table in their restaurant, a round table, and
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  anybody could sit at that round table.
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  But when you sat there, you sat there because you wanted
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  to talk to other people.
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  People like Chairman General Motors would get how the real man thinks about things.
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  It was a good place for people to be very comfortable, to ask
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  people of different experiences, answers, questions, or just talk to.
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  It was a very cool place in that regard.
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  Well, I sat next to a guy that had an office across the street from the office.
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  We were at time and life building because his customer was across
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  the street next to me, JC Penney's.
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  He sold furniture.
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  He represented a North Carolina furniture place, and he sat next to
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  me and this guy was a police groupie.
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  He loved the badge.
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  He loved talking to everybody in the police force.
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  He just loved everything about being a policeman or helping
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  them or being involved with them, or being able to talk to them.
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  After about two weeks after we talked about crap, he
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  said, give me three librettos.
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  I said, great.
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  What?
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  Four?
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  He said, I'm giving them to the New York Police Department.
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  They're gonna use it for their meter maids.
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  Okay.
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  I guess for the meter maids, it's not a bad idea, but I wasn't sure.
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  But anyhow, it didn't matter.
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  So we gave 'em three and one week later.
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  It comes in with a letter that says, we have come to the conclusion
• 9:39
  that this replaces five meter MAs, but rather than fire anybody,
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  we're gonna be moving them up.
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  Those that are not gonna be meter MAs any longer, and let them
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  start to become more police women.
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  And we're very excited.
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  Everything.
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  And we want a thousand.
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  So I work out a commission.
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  I called in and I say, listen, we just sold a thousand.
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  I'm gonna have to pay the man 5% of the whatever the bill is for that.
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  Is that okay?
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  Yeah.
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  Okay, good.
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  Can we're gonna be able to ship it tomorrow.
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  Who do?
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  And I tell him, oh, they're all very excited.
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  Okay, well, I just sold a thousand things go wrong.
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  A week goes by now, remember, this guy's excited.
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  He's making money and he's dealing with the police.
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  He's the happiest human being ever happened.
• 10:17
  The next thing I got is I need, uh, three more scooters, but four.
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  Well, at that time, central Park was not a safe place to be in day or night.
• 10:27
  Lot of little petty robberies.
• 10:28
  Running after people on this terrain was not the coolest thing ever happened.
• 10:32
  And the truth of the matter is a small wheel vehicle was not the ideal choice.
• 10:36
  It should have been a bigger wheel if you're gonna be running over
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  these rocks and all the other crap.
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  Nobody asked them.
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  This guy is out selling all the time because now he had an end.
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  They just bought a thousand things and he's getting excited about making money.
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  So we give him three.
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  And about a week later, there's an article in the paper how the
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  scooter patrol has made a portion of Central Park safe and the police
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  department is buying a thousand.
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  It's 2000 we have just sold and we're getting credit for cleaning up
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  Central Park and increasing the people who are getting kicked up in their
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  jobs because of the Scoot Patrol.
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  So everybody is about as happy as can be.
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  I'm not doing anything, having lunch and reading my papers.
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  Everything is going again.
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  Pretty good now.
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  I sold 2000, but enough is enough.
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  This is not gonna happen in every city in America.
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  They made one, two, or three.
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  And that's a long run to get rid of another 23, other
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  thousand of these things.
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  And I gotta get rid of them because I don't wanna have to think about
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  this anymore and I'm realizing this is how I'm gonna sell it.
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  I'm just gonna come to this round table and talk to this nice guy
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  and he's gonna figure it out.
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  'cause he just couldn't make you happier.
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  Then he comes back to me and says, gimme 15,000.
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  Okay, what do you want it for?
• 11:42
  We're running an ad in the police Gazette and both people in charge of
• 11:45
  the park and in charge of the meter maids are gonna allow to put their
• 11:49
  names on it and their phone numbers.
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  And you, the police department can call them up and they'll
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  tell 'em what happened.
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  And we set out all for them brothers.
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  Now I got about, I don't know, eight, nine months to go.
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  I got nothing to do, but I'm liking what I'm doing, so I'm gonna keep doing it.
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  But I start reading specifically what's going on in the scooter world
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  and I find something is starting to happen called rental scooters for
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  $15 an hour, $15 an hour to rent a scooter that cost you maybe $300.
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  That's unbelievable.
• 12:21
  So I go and I check 'em out and I start traveling around a little, and
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  I come to the interesting conclusion that the fallacy in what's happening
• 12:28
  is nobody can get insurance.
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  So what happens when you are now renting a scooter that nobody's been on that has to
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  have a shift while you balance is probably the most dangerous thing, you can probably
• 12:39
  rent for $15 an hour because you're gonna get in an accident or you're gonna
• 12:42
  drop it on, or something's gonna happen because you gotta do too many new things.
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  And where you're going, you're going out in the street.
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  And that's what happened.
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  They rent 'em like crazy and you know, making money.
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  And then somebody would get hurt and that goes down because
• 12:54
  they didn't have insurance.
• 12:55
  So I went, oh, isn't this interesting?
• 12:57
  So I went out and I went to State Farm and I made a deal that I
• 13:00
  would pay them a dollar an hour for every rental if I decided to get
• 13:04
  into the scooter rental business.
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  So now I had insurance and now I had to find a scooter.
• 13:08
  The world umbrellas that's over.
• 13:10
  They sold their factory.
• 13:11
  There's no more them in there.
• 13:13
  I gotta find a scooter and I'm reading my paper.
• 13:15
  And in the Wall Street Journal, it was a little thing about a guy in Boston who
• 13:18
  was 450 rabbit motor scooters that are on rental, but he needs a $75,000 guarantee.
• 13:25
  And the story was he was overdue to pay a 75,000 loan to New England Merchants Bank.
• 13:32
  That was an S B A loan that they guaranteed but is now due.
• 13:37
  So I fly to go see him and his story is he makes a fortune renting
• 13:40
  the scooters out because they have an automatic transmission.
• 13:44
  Oh my God, I have insurance and an automatic transmission
• 13:47
  and he rents 'em out.
• 13:48
  But now come fall or winter, you gotta put 'em in storage.
• 13:52
  It ain't so good.
• 13:53
  Rent those things out in the snow and the ice and the other.
• 13:56
  So one, he has to pay for it instead of an income coming in.
• 13:59
  He is the distributor for the United States.
• 14:02
  So he has parts he has to take care of warehousing, and he
• 14:05
  has a airplane that he loves.
• 14:07
  I say, okay, let's go to the bank.
• 14:09
  We go to the bank and I say, listen, I'm willing to make a deal.
• 14:12
  I'll guarantee the 75,000.
• 14:13
  If it's not paid off and what we're gonna do, then I'll personally pay it off.
• 14:17
  I tell him he can keep the airplane and he keep the 450 scooters too.
• 14:21
  I said, all I want is the new inventory you have, and all I want
• 14:23
  is the parts which I'll take care of and I'll guarantee the loan.
• 14:26
  And he was a happy camper.
• 14:27
  Oh, and what other little condition?
• 14:29
  The contract you have to bring him into the United States has
• 14:32
  to be assigned to my company.
• 14:33
  Call me when you got that.
• 14:34
  Bank calls me, we got it.
• 14:35
  And I come in and sign the note and I proceed to put together a little
• 14:38
  package to sell a dozen of these things to gas stations because
• 14:42
  they have the cash to put in it.
• 14:44
  They have the people to fix it, they have the location to rent it from it.
• 14:47
  None of that do they think cost them any money.
• 14:48
  So it's all profit as far as I'm concerned.
• 14:50
  And there were a lot of people who owned their place so they
• 14:52
  could borrow against the place.
• 14:54
  And it was an inch in cash.
• 14:55
  No, by the way, we got insurance.
• 14:57
  You don't have to close in case you got an accident.
• 14:59
  So we had a couple hundred of the thing and I sold em out in about a week.
• 15:01
  Now I need a whole bunch.
• 15:03
  I find out the address and I buy a telex machine and it telex the Fuji.
• 15:07
  Things are really good here.
• 15:09
  I wanna come over and talk about buying your whole supply of scooters,
• 15:12
  and I'd like to show up and they tell me, excuse me, who am I?
• 15:15
  Didn't they know that they are not building these scooters any longer?
• 15:19
  They sold it to Israel.
• 15:21
  I go call up the bank and say, excuse me, I have a small problem here.
• 15:24
  Oh yeah, we knew all about it, but we figured there wouldn't be a problem You.
• 15:29
  Now let me go find out what I can talk them into is what I got.
• 15:33
  So I got myself a ticket and I said, I'm coming over because
• 15:35
  we have a small problem here.
• 15:37
  I was told we have a contract.
• 15:39
  So now they're on the defensive right away because, oh my God,
• 15:42
  United States, this is 1967.
• 15:45
  Everybody was cautious.
• 15:46
  The United States was a big, scary place to be from.
• 15:49
  So now I came over and I just had all my presentation, why I can sell everything.
• 15:54
  Whatever deal you make, I'll pay for it.
• 15:56
  I'm telling you everything you make I can buy, I'll give
• 15:59
  you letters of credit for it.
• 16:00
  And they then took me in their style to show me everything.
• 16:03
  They build up all over Japan.
• 16:05
  They build planes and they build cars.
• 16:07
  I was getting a little uncomfortable here.
• 16:10
  They were so nice.
• 16:11
  Now, they were being nice because first of all, they thought I came from Mars.
• 16:14
  I had sideburns down to here.
• 16:16
  I had Peter Max ties and double breasted suits, and I'm 20 something years old.
• 16:19
  The youngest guy there is 50 something and they're wearing gray and gray
• 16:23
  and gr and here I come waltzing in there with buy everything.
• 16:28
  With my waving my hands around, they show me everything.
• 16:31
  And I see the bigger car and I see the little car, and I stole prices.
• 16:34
  Six 40 bucks and it sticks in my head.
• 16:36
  Boy, I'm sure I could sell that, but I didn't want that.
• 16:38
  I wanted the bigger car.
• 16:39
  Now this is the only two other cars with Toyota and Datson out there.
• 16:43
  And they'd come back and the quality here now was at this moment superlative.
• 16:48
  You could smell it.
• 16:49
  It looks so everything they we're doing.
• 16:51
  So I think I've convinced 'em to open the factory 'cause
• 16:54
  they shake their head a lot us.
• 16:55
  So I forgot.
• 16:56
  I didn't know that us so meant we understand not, yes, you got a deal.
• 17:00
  So I go back happy as can be.
• 17:02
  And two weeks later I got told really sorry.
• 17:04
  And they showed me the factory and it wasn't being dismantled.
• 17:07
  So they weren't lying to me at all.
• 17:08
  Okay.
• 17:08
  I can't convince 'em, I can't believe I didn't convince 'em.
• 17:11
  So I said, okay, I'm coming back to talk to you about the little car.
• 17:14
  And I fly back.
• 17:14
  Now they have a problem.
• 17:16
  What do they do with me?
• 17:17
  I have been very nice.
• 17:18
  There have been no threatening about anything.
• 17:20
  They're still nervous and uh, they say, okay, we'll be happy to, we don't think
• 17:24
  you can sell 'em in the United States.
• 17:25
  You know, people are too big in the United States for a small
• 17:27
  car like that, ba blah blah.
• 17:29
  They said, yeah, I know I fit in it.
• 17:30
  And I was a little bigger before I started shrinking over the years.
• 17:34
  But I fit really comfortable.
• 17:35
  I could put a hat on and sit in a silver stick.
• 17:37
  It was really well engineered.
• 17:39
  Malcolm, you've often said you didn't know anything about the car
• 17:42
  industry when you brought Subaru over.
• 17:45
  Right?
• 17:45
  When you go into that, I don't understand.
• 17:47
  How is it that some guy walks in off the street and says, Hey, Subaru,
• 17:50
  that looks like a cute little car.
• 17:51
  I could sell those and brings them in here with the same
• 17:54
  alacrity of say, oh, I don't know.
• 17:56
  I'm gonna import trash cans.
• 17:57
  I mean, how do you do that?
• 17:59
  That's a major, major step.
• 18:01
  Well, here's how, if you saw a little car that you could sit in and be about
• 18:04
  six foot six in this little egg car, and it was cute as can be, and it
• 18:08
  had another interior and white wall tires and a radio and tinted glass,
• 18:12
  and you could buy it for 640 bucks, F o b Yoko helmet, and you know what?
• 18:16
  I'll bet you I could do something for 30 or $40 a month.
• 18:19
  I'll bet you I could do something.
• 18:20
  And they wanted a million and a half dollars because the next year you
• 18:24
  start meeting the federal regulations.
• 18:26
  They ordered to meet 'em.
• 18:27
  They, and they never would've met 'em.
• 18:29
  But besides that, of course I'm not giving them money.
• 18:31
  I'd never been in the car business.
• 18:32
  I don't remember even buying a car.
• 18:33
  Somebody already leased it for me.
• 18:35
  He gave it back to them.
• 18:36
  And so I had the least experience in retail.
• 18:38
  What I learned was how the world works in the import world.
• 18:42
  And I was able to get whatever the hell I wanted when I wanted a country or a car
• 18:46
  that I thought I could do something with.
• 18:47
  And I learned how to make sure that met all the regulations.
• 18:50
  To dovetail off of what Don said.
• 18:52
  He said the Subaru was a small car, it was cute, whitewall tires,
• 18:54
  radio, all this kind of thing.
• 18:55
  But in 19 66, 67, 68, there were a lot of choices there.
• 18:59
  You had the Fiat 500, the Mini Coopers were out the Doche
• 19:02
  Vott, well wait, wait, wait.
• 19:04
  Not in 68.
• 19:05
  In 60 out the Honda.
• 19:07
  No, not the Honda.
• 19:08
  They came in fourth.
• 19:09
  The, uh, Datson and the Toyota had had a bad reputation.
• 19:13
  They came in a couple years beforehand.
• 19:15
  The quality was really funny.
• 19:16
  That's when Japan was known for funny quality.
• 19:19
  But the year I brought the Subaru in is the year Japan changed
• 19:23
  from having ah, To incredible the highlight of the world on quality.
• 19:28
  I have to correct, not correct exactly, but add onto something that just
• 19:33
  annoys me when I read it incorrectly.
• 19:35
  Everybody goes from, I brought the 360 into the United States.
• 19:39
  We were selling like crazy and consumer report killed us.
• 19:43
  Oh, it was terrible.
• 19:44
  It was unsafe because we got here without having to meet the regulations.
• 19:47
  'cause it was under a thousand pound.
• 19:49
  That wasn't my first choice.
• 19:50
  My first choice was I wished I'd gotten the front wheel drive and then the all
• 19:54
  wheel drive that they were developing, but they didn't wanna give it to me.
• 19:57
  So they said, okay, finally.
• 19:59
  And this was to put me off, give us a million and a half
• 20:01
  dollars and we'll converted to meet the regulations for 1968.
• 20:05
  I said, wait, stop.
• 20:06
  Let me go find out about the regulations and I'll be back.
• 20:09
  And I fly to Washington.
• 20:10
  I go to n Gimme the rules on the regulations that come out next year.
• 20:14
  They gave a book about three inches stick and I started reading the first couple
• 20:17
  pages and I put it down after myself.
• 20:19
  I don't understand what heck I'm reading and I'll never, this is not the way to go.
• 20:23
  But I go to the first page and it says, these regulations apply to
• 20:27
  all cars over a thousand pounds.
• 20:29
  Curb weight.
• 20:31
  Back in, excuse me.
• 20:32
  What's curb weight?
• 20:33
  Oh, that's all the fluids in your car when it's sitting at the curb, your air
• 20:37
  conditioning fluid in there, windshield wiper fluid and your gasoline sitting in.
• 20:41
  But the brochure says nine 60.
• 20:43
  How fast can you change the law?
• 20:45
  Here's how it works.
• 20:46
  First, we have to have a lot of complaints.
• 20:48
  After we have a lot of complaints, then we have to have hearings.
• 20:50
  After the hearings.
• 20:51
  If we decide to make a change, it takes two years.
• 20:54
  I said, what I'm hearing is no matter what happens, I got two years.
• 20:57
  No, what you're not hearing is you probably got, maybe never will we change
• 21:01
  it, but at earliest, if everything went really terrible, it's five or six years.
• 21:05
  No kidding.
• 21:06
  What do I do?
• 21:06
  Take that brochure down to the I R S, they'll give you an exemption.
• 21:09
  So I do, and I now have a paper that says the Subaru 360 I bring in does
• 21:14
  not have to meet the regulations.
• 21:15
  I tell ex Fuji and said, I'm coming over with one of my team and I
• 21:19
  had no team by the way, and I hired a guy that was 55 years old.
• 21:23
  His job was to be old.
• 21:24
  Don't open his mouth, don't say anything, just be old.
• 21:29
  And we go there.
• 21:30
  It was snowing in Tokyo, which was a big rare deal.
• 21:34
  So now I go there.
• 21:35
  I had asked for the board to show up, they have the board there.
• 21:38
  And I said, listen, I wanna tell you a thank you all for
• 21:41
  your incredible hospitality.
• 21:42
  I know you were just trying to appease me because he didn't
• 21:45
  know what the liability is.
• 21:46
  You have no liability.
• 21:48
  No matter what happens today, you have no liability.
• 21:50
  You had nothing to do with it.
• 21:52
  It was a defrauded by the bank.
• 21:53
  And even that didn't actually hurt me and brought me here.
• 21:56
  So as far as I'm concerned, thank you.
• 21:58
  It was really a pleasure meeting you.
• 22:00
  But I didn't tell you one thing and I tried to not, but I'm
• 22:03
  going to, In the United States.
• 22:05
  I'm very powerful politically, and I know you think I'm full of shit
• 22:08
  because I'm too young for that.
• 22:09
  So here's the deal I'd like to make.
• 22:11
  And by the way, I'll give you a thing in writing saying you have no liability
• 22:15
  to make now or any date from here down.
• 22:17
  I said, if I have what I just said, I have from the United States government,
• 22:23
  you tell me you'll gimme the car.
• 22:24
  'cause you don't have to meet the regulations.
• 22:26
  So you don't need the million and a half dollars, they said.
• 22:28
  Absolutely.
• 22:29
  And I pulled out the paper.
• 22:31
  Subaru of America was born and we did all that and met all
• 22:35
  the regulations in 14 months.
• 22:37
  And they gave me the little car figuring I'm not gonna sell that many anyhow.
• 22:40
  And they would make nights.
• 22:41
  I figured if I brought the 360 in, they're gonna have to gimme the bigger car.
• 22:45
  'cause I'm setting up Subaru dealers.
• 22:46
  You can't set up two sets of Subaru dealers.
• 22:49
  Well, what happened was right in the middle of it all consumer
• 22:51
  report in effect, killed us because all the banks read it and
• 22:55
  they cut off the floor planning.
• 22:56
  So now I had no car, but I had plenty of cars coming in on letters of credit.
• 23:00
  One I had to get rid of them, and two, I needed the bigger car.
• 23:03
  So I went to Japan and I spent a week with everybody telling me no.
• 23:08
  And I had a meeting with the chairman of the board as my last resort at
• 23:12
  dinner and the next day I was leaving because I didn't know what else to do.
• 23:15
  They, everybody said no.
• 23:17
  They were polite.
• 23:18
  They listened to the story of why, how important it was, but they said no.
• 23:21
  Are you still involved with Subaru?
• 23:23
  We got a contract.
• 23:24
  We asked for a perpetual contract because that would get us when we
• 23:29
  came back, millions of dollars from an investment banker who said if we
• 23:32
  came back with a 25 year contract, we would have the money with the contract.
• 23:37
  So I decided to push it and say, I'm coming back with a perpetual contract.
• 23:41
  Well, they didn't want to even hear about that, but because I got it
• 23:44
  with the chairman of the board, changing his mind, it appeared as
• 23:47
  if we had more strength than we had.
• 23:49
  And so after all sorts of incredible things in negotiations, like,
• 23:53
  we'll give you $10 and we'll put it in the bank in Tokyo.
• 23:56
  And I said, we'll all go to jail.
• 23:58
  Because you can't do that legally when you're a public company.
• 24:00
  So I said that doesn't go anywhere.
• 24:02
  Well, how about if we give you the word perpetual, but we, you can't tell
• 24:06
  anybody I said we're a public company.
• 24:08
  Every year it's gonna be on the first paragraph of every financial
• 24:11
  statement we ever put out.
• 24:12
  The end of the story is they gave me perpetual, and it was in the front first
• 24:17
  paragraph of everything that came out financially on the year end report.
• 24:21
  So now, 20 years later, not right after the 360 started to fail, 20
• 24:27
  years later, Fuji Heavy Industries bought out the stockholders and
• 24:31
  it became a private company.
• 24:33
  What's interesting in my life, I've been an importer five times.
• 24:37
  If you put all the other people in the last century to put it together as
• 24:41
  zero Hoffman in the late forties, early fifties, sort of got everybody in Europe
• 24:47
  and they had all the brands, but he never sold brands, you know, two or three BMWs.
• 24:51
  He sold the companies back to the companies because the truth of the matter,
• 24:55
  major companies in the car business do not wanna have another importer.
• 24:58
  They wanna be the importer, and they set up distributors.
• 25:02
  Volkswagen did that, Toyota did that, SHA did that.
• 25:05
  And then after everybody's successful, they buy 'em all back.
• 25:08
  Audibly wonderful prices, as a matter of fact.
• 25:11
  And two of my Subaru distributors refuse to sell Northeast and uh,
• 25:15
  new England, and they're making so much money they have to shovel it.
• 25:18
  Two Toyota distributors also didn't sell and they were offered
• 25:21
  billions, and Moran is out there having a good time not doing that.
• 25:25
  So being a distributor is a big deal, but being an importer
• 25:28
  sets up the distributors, and that's what I was five times.
• 25:31
  The least equipped human being on the planet from a car point of view to be.
• 25:35
  That was me starting off and I got all the distributors because I didn't know how or
• 25:40
  what dealers were the best in the area, and they did, and I made them buy stock.
• 25:44
  Split 10 for one went to 300.
• 25:46
  Every car we sold, whether it be a Brooklyn or a Hugo,
• 25:49
  made money as a dealer.
• 25:51
  Why Hugo and the Hugo from Yugos Savia, that was about as bad a factor as
• 25:57
  you'll imagine in the world with grease.
• 25:58
  About a foot and a half in the first piece of equipment was a quarter of a
• 26:01
  million dollars to get a machine to clean the grease off the floor and everybody
• 26:04
  smoking and putting in the cars and of course that burns everything in there.
• 26:08
  Had to get the not to smoke and they were welding without goggles and
• 26:11
  burning their eyes out because on top of that, they had 50,000 people
• 26:15
  in the factory that needed 2,500.
• 26:17
  Isn't that nice?
• 26:18
  And a hundred percent of the cars that came off the line did
• 26:21
  not meet our qualifications.
• 26:22
  So we had to build a little factory outside the factory where our people
• 26:25
  did it, and then clean the rust off the trucks to the trains and take
• 26:29
  them, pave the ports into the port, bring in unleaded gas 'cause they
• 26:33
  didn't have any, and get ships to go to Yugoslavia to pick up cars, car carriers.
• 26:38
  We did all that.
• 26:39
  Alright, there you go.
• 26:40
  So as we switch gears now, you're becoming deeper invested into the
• 26:45
  automotive world, whether you liked it or not, coming from the scooters and
• 26:48
  through the Subarus and even the Yugos later, how did you get to the point
• 26:51
  where you were building your own car?
• 26:54
  Now remember, as I started bringing in these cars, the thing that
• 26:58
  put me in the worst jeopardy was consumer report saying it was unsafe.
• 27:01
  So I decided, because I'm reading now Automotive news, I'm reading everything
• 27:06
  I can read about that has anything to do with the world of automobiles because
• 27:09
  I am now gonna become the expert on the world on how the world works in importing
• 27:14
  cars, because that's my new business.
• 27:16
  So if I might not know about how you fix a car, but I should know how to bring a car
• 27:21
  in and meet the regulations and deal with the people over there and get the shipping
• 27:24
  and make sure everything is there and make sure I have distributors that put money
• 27:28
  into the company that finances them and get letters of credit that stretch out.
• 27:32
  So I have five or six months to pay for 'em, even though
• 27:34
  they're always guaranteed.
• 27:35
  So I can negotiate with the banks to get lots of 'em because they're gonna have
• 27:38
  cash for a whole bunch of time, on and on.
• 27:40
  And that I knew better than anybody in the universe.
• 27:43
  What happened next was unexpected because they wrote this article
• 27:47
  and all of a sudden floor planning drained up and I was dead.
• 27:50
  Now that forced me to convince them to gimme a bigger car, and
• 27:53
  once I had the bigger car, now everything started to smooth out.
• 27:56
  There was no more of this craziness.
• 27:58
  I found a way with a thing called Fast Track.
• 28:00
  I built a little track and ripped the cars apart, made 'em into race cars racing
• 28:04
  against the clock, and people went and paid a dollar a ride that took about 35
• 28:08
  seconds and they couldn't get enough, and I had 'em all over the place until
• 28:11
  I finally got paid for all my things in a dollar a piece all over the country.
• 28:14
  I then met John Doan, who loved the idea, and I said, I'm only in it to
• 28:18
  get rid of the cars, and he said, he and Penske would love to do copy of it.
• 28:22
  Be my guest.
• 28:22
  They did Malibu Grand Prix.
• 28:24
  So that got me comfortable and friendly with John Horian, who
• 28:27
  I had great admiration for.
• 28:29
  So now by getting the bigger car, all of a sudden we're in a different position.
• 28:33
  Now, my executive Vice President, Harvey Lamb, who was actually running the
• 28:37
  company, company, one of the best managers in the U universe, he came from having
• 28:42
  a furniture store that his peak sale was, they financed the hell out of it.
• 28:45
  That's where he came from.
• 28:46
  When he would go with me with Japan and tell them the safety regulations.
• 28:53
  All the things I don't want to do.
• 28:54
  He did fabulously.
• 28:55
  So it was a good partnership.
• 28:57
  He was really important, and then he ended up running the company.
• 28:59
  What was the catalyst that made you say, I wanna build my own car?
• 29:03
  Because I decided I'm gonna show them a mount not safe.
• 29:06
  I'm gonna build the most gorgeous, absolute safest car I
• 29:09
  can imagine with 10 mile an hour bumpers, no damage to the body.
• 29:12
  An acrylic body, you could not dent.
• 29:14
  It would be the same 40 years from the day, and it's 50 years from the day as
• 29:18
  good as it came off the line, because it's an eighth ty of solid paint.
• 29:21
  You can't dent it, but you can make a hole, but you can put the
• 29:23
  hole back in and it just buffet.
• 29:25
  It's amazing.
• 29:26
  The Corvette was the only car at the time, made of fiberglass.
• 29:31
  Did that influence the SV one's design in construction?
• 29:34
  What was the SV one designed to compete against?
• 29:36
  Was it the Corvette?
• 29:38
  Was it the nine 11?
• 29:39
  Who was the intended target?
• 29:40
  The number one competitor when I was still in the prototype phase in Livonia.
• 29:45
  The and her grass ended up taking the original design that I had done.
• 29:50
  For one, it made it really cool.
• 29:52
  Hell, and did the clay and all the stuff you do back then took care of
• 29:56
  the 200 engineers we had drawing.
• 29:58
  Every day I get a call from John.
• 30:00
  He'd already done the Malibu Grand period, and he calls me up and
• 30:03
  he said, Hey, next time you come into Detroit, let me pick you up.
• 30:07
  Okay, great.
• 30:07
  It was another couple days and I'm there and he picks me up in a stretch Chevy and
• 30:11
  he says, do you have a problem if I go see what you're doing with the prototype?
• 30:14
  And he said, not at all.
• 30:15
  In fact, you'll probably know everybody there.
• 30:17
  I stole 'em all from Corvette.
• 30:19
  Okay, great.
• 30:20
  So we go and he spends about an hour talking to all the guys.
• 30:24
  He knew all the guys and it looked like he was in heaven.
• 30:26
  I mean, he loved watching that to me.
• 30:28
  I thought it was interesting.
• 30:29
  But I just wanted the car, come on, let's get done.
• 30:31
  Let's get the car.
• 30:32
  So afterwards he says, let's go to lunch.
• 30:34
  Okay, great.
• 30:35
  He says, uh, Malcolm, what would you say if I told you I would leave General Motors
• 30:38
  and go to work for you as your president?
• 30:40
  I said, John, I'd kiss your ass in Mason's window.
• 30:42
  I don't know what I'm doing, building a car.
• 30:44
  I would love it to have somebody like you.
• 30:46
  I mean you.
• 30:47
  No, that would be the best.
• 30:49
  You were on MotorTrend, seduced by Speed, a series where you told a story on the
• 30:53
  DeLorean episode, which fills the gap between the book on a Clear day, which
• 30:57
  explains John's departure from gm.
• 30:59
  And when he started, the D M C said, well, I leave General
• 31:03
  Motors, I'm gonna lose 1,000,006.
• 31:04
  I said, so you're saying 1,000,006 buys me a quarterback, John, get your lawyer.
• 31:09
  Come to Philadelphia tomorrow.
• 31:10
  You're gonna meet John Ing chairman of the first Pennsylvania bank.
• 31:14
  He said, I'll put up some more in my super stock.
• 31:16
  I'll borrow 1,000,006.
• 31:17
  He said, you ready to move?
• 31:18
  I said, you wanna go slower?
• 31:20
  We can do a general motor style.
• 31:21
  How about next year you'll show up and we'll talk about it?
• 31:24
  He said, okay.
• 31:25
  He said, you're serious?
• 31:26
  I said, yeah.
• 31:26
  So next day he met me in Philadelphia.
• 31:29
  John Bunning absolutely loved the idea.
• 31:31
  Malcolm, I love this idea.
• 31:33
  Oh, Todd, oh my God.
• 31:35
  Couldn't be better.
• 31:36
  I said, so I got the money.
• 31:37
  Yeah.
• 31:37
  So everybody shakes hands.
• 31:39
  John says to me, Malcolm, this is less than 24 hours since I talked to you.
• 31:42
  Yeah.
• 31:43
  I would like to keep moving fast.
• 31:44
  John.
• 31:45
  Only thing you need outta your head is we're not moving at general motor speed.
• 31:48
  We're moving at my speed.
• 31:49
  My speed is you do everything and you get it done and you make decisions
• 31:52
  and you don't keep on dragging it out.
• 31:54
  That's all the difference.
• 31:55
  And you know what to do, so it shouldn't be a problem.
• 31:57
  No, no.
• 31:58
  I love it.
• 31:58
  I love it.
• 31:59
  He goes home and about eight o'clock that night I get a call.
• 32:02
  Malcolm, my attorney and I, we still can't get over it.
• 32:04
  We never heard of something so fast.
• 32:06
  We're so excited about it.
• 32:07
  But he sort of told me that I should get the money after taxes.
• 32:11
  So I thought about it.
• 32:12
  I said, John, it's a couple hundred thousand more.
• 32:14
  And to tell you the truth, it shouldn't make any difference at all.
• 32:17
  I'm still getting you and that's what I'm buying.
• 32:19
  I got a problem.
• 32:20
  'cause while I was thinking about it, I was thinking about
• 32:23
  we're both sort of narcissists.
• 32:25
  And I think we're gonna end up having a fight over whose name
• 32:27
  goes on the back of the car.
• 32:28
  And that's not up for negotiation.
• 32:30
  So I have a feeling we should back off and see wherever it goes.
• 32:34
  And he agreed on the phone.
• 32:35
  'cause I think he was getting nervous.
• 32:36
  I mean, he's lived in a General Motors game and he realizes
• 32:39
  this is a different game.
• 32:40
  Completely.
• 32:40
  Okay.
• 32:41
  And he knew it was right.
• 32:42
  He wanted his name on the back.
• 32:44
  Let's dig a little bit deeper into your relationship with John DeLorean.
• 32:47
  How about dinner next time you're here?
• 32:49
  Absolutely.
• 32:49
  We sit down, said, uh, you wanna guess what we're gonna talk about?
• 32:52
  I said, there's no guessing you wanna build a car with your name
• 32:54
  on the back, Jeff, any suggestions?
• 32:57
  I said, well, you know 'em all.
• 32:58
  You need a paint factory.
• 32:59
  You can't afford $300 million, so you better find a material that allows
• 33:03
  you to not need a paint for, oh, I've been building out a stainless steel.
• 33:05
  Wow, you can actually do it.
• 33:06
  Yep.
• 33:07
  I said, okay, I'm gonna give you a free piece of marketing.
• 33:09
  Take it for whatever you wanna take it.
• 33:11
  No matter how good you build anything and whatever color, in this case,
• 33:15
  stainless steel, once you start building a lot of them, everything loses.
• 33:19
  Its pizazz and all of a sudden you can't sell what was the
• 33:22
  coolest thing in the world.
• 33:23
  You can't just do the same.
• 33:25
  If you're going for volume, you going for no volume.
• 33:27
  You can get away with it.
• 33:28
  No, no.
• 33:29
  Stainless steel.
• 33:29
  We can anodize.
• 33:30
  You can't anodize because anodize looks like shit for what people want.
• 33:34
  They want shiny.
• 33:35
  Mm-hmm.
• 33:36
  He said, yeah, you're right.
• 33:37
  But I said, blah, blah.
• 33:38
  Okay, fine.
• 33:39
  He said, okay.
• 33:40
  Last thing.
• 33:40
  Can I use your prototype in the film you use to raise some money?
• 33:43
  Be my guest.
• 33:44
  We have a gray car that's in some museum I gave it to.
• 33:47
  And if you put it next to a DeLorean would almost look
• 33:50
  exactly, which was my permission.
• 33:53
  They did whatever he wanted to do fine, but took me two years and $30 million.
• 33:57
  Took him six years and $300 million.
• 34:00
  And the only difference is I had enough sales for four years from
• 34:04
  dealers who were, were getting deposits from people all over the place.
• 34:07
  And his problem after 5,000 vehicles was sales because they were bored
• 34:11
  of stainless steel and he tried to anodize and a looked like ship.
• 34:15
  That's when he got involved in the stupidity.
• 34:17
  That got 'em all in publicity with just eight.
• 34:20
  I mean, for a man that is as narcissistic as he was and he, he made
• 34:24
  me look like a humble person almost.
• 34:26
  For that to happen to him publicly ripped his insides out.
• 34:29
  Who designed the SV one?
• 34:31
  Irv bras.
• 34:32
  What a cool guy.
• 34:33
  He was Dolly looking guy with a big shaggy beard and his wife was a stripper
• 34:38
  and he was just as happy as could be.
• 34:41
  A great couple really were, and I'm looking for designers in Detroit because
• 34:47
  I've been told that this prototype that I got Bruce Meyers to build for me,
• 34:51
  it looks pretty close to what I want.
• 34:53
  Not one nutter bolt from that is gonna be in the real car that
• 34:56
  it had nothing to do with being engineer, nothing to do with nothing.
• 34:59
  It looked like pretty close to what I wanted.
• 35:01
  So now I had to go find a designer and they tell me about a clay model.
• 35:05
  One 10,000 of an inch.
• 35:06
  It takes hundreds of hours.
• 35:08
  Oh my God.
• 35:09
  And as soon as they pull the plaster, it's all ruined.
• 35:11
  So I interviewed a number of designers, and by the way, I work
• 35:14
  at the office early in the morning, one or two o'clock in the morning.
• 35:17
  Sometimes I don't go back.
• 35:18
  I sleep on the floor, herb grass.
• 35:20
  He says to me, 'cause I tell him I hardly sleep.
• 35:22
  He said, well, you can come visit at two o'clock.
• 35:24
  He'd probably get me at the office.
• 35:25
  So one day at two o'clock I show up at his office and I walk into his
• 35:29
  office and there he is, sitting with his secretary and she's naked and
• 35:33
  he is painting her, painting her.
• 35:36
  Not the canvas painting her and I go and I see him and I say, you know what?
• 35:40
  You're just my kind of guy.
• 35:41
  You're hired.
• 35:42
  So that was the reason I hired her graph.
• 35:44
  It was the seventies.
• 35:45
  Know?
• 35:45
  Yeah.
• 35:45
  Oh no.
• 35:46
  Let me tell you.
• 35:46
  He did an incredible job and he did it fast.
• 35:49
  Remember from the day I woke up and said I'd do it to the day I came off
• 35:53
  with the false prototype to begin with, with the clay prototype, with all the
• 35:56
  tilling that had to be made and they shrink at different temperatures.
• 35:59
  Oh my God, what a thing.
• 36:01
  And it all got done.
• 36:02
  I was always curious, SV one, why go wing doors?
• 36:05
  Oh, the whole purpose of building the car was to go wing doors to show
• 36:09
  you how great things come from the silliest little things in the world.
• 36:13
  I had at the time, three kids.
• 36:15
  Three boys and on Saturday morning was cartoon time on television and
• 36:20
  that was a really wonderful time.
• 36:21
  'cause they got 'em, they're almost quiet.
• 36:23
  They didn't have to break up fights with all the other happy horse shit.
• 36:26
  So we would always watch cartoons or various shows.
• 36:29
  And one of the shows that was on Saturday morning, I think it was called 99 a
• 36:34
  Space Odyssey, something like that.
• 36:36
  And every week what would happen is a car would silently pull
• 36:40
  up and the doors would go.
• 36:42
  And that was about 15 seconds of the reel every time.
• 36:45
  And I went, I wanna build a car that looks like that.
• 36:47
  I went to doors and go.
• 36:50
  And that's why I built a car.
• 36:51
  It was a cartoon.
• 36:52
  Well, it wasn't exactly, it was an actual human show on the moon.
• 36:55
  Oh, on the moon.
• 36:56
  And that car was on the moon.
• 36:57
  That's awesome.
• 36:58
  But I looked forward every Saturday to look at the car.
• 37:01
  It had trapped me, so it was obviously in my destiny.
• 37:04
  I mean, I didn't think of it that way until one day I said,
• 37:07
  I gotta build a safety car.
• 37:08
  Car's gonna look like that.
• 37:09
  And the go.
• 37:10
  That was the reason I wanted to build those doors.
• 37:13
  You understand Where the whole purpose of me deciding to build a car.
• 37:16
  Now we have all the engineers and all these people who are really car guys
• 37:20
  and they know they're working for a guy Jetson, admitted doesn't know cars.
• 37:24
  The way they think.
• 37:25
  I had to know it in order to do it.
• 37:26
  So they would try to influence me in lots of things.
• 37:29
  One of 'em was, forget about the push button going doors.
• 37:32
  Forget about the window going up and down, because the physics out here and the
• 37:36
  physics here is way different in the door.
• 37:38
  Okay.
• 37:39
  And how much safety you sit as a safety thing.
• 37:41
  What if you're upside down?
• 37:43
  Oh my God, I said the glass going come down.
• 37:45
  You're gonna have a hand grenade pin there so you can pull it
• 37:48
  and kick if you're upside down.
• 37:50
  And.
• 37:53
  There's three ways to get out of this thing.
• 37:54
  The window, kick out the door, go behind it better than any car you ever had.
• 37:58
  I said to them, now I want a push button door.
• 38:02
  I wanna be able to push it walking to the car and see the damn thing go
• 38:05
  up, whether the window's up or down.
• 38:06
  And they kept telling me, we can't do it.
• 38:08
  We can't do it.
• 38:09
  Remember, I'm doing it for the doors and I'm not getting the doors.
• 38:12
  That's not gonna happen.
• 38:13
  I pulled everybody together.
• 38:15
  I said, here's the story.
• 38:16
  I'm leaving back to Philadelphia.
• 38:17
  I'll be back next week.
• 38:19
  If the doors work, great.
• 38:20
  If not, I'm closing down the.
• 38:23
  As I'm walking out to the car, one of the kids that works in
• 38:26
  the place comes out and says, Mr.
• 38:27
  Bricklin, can I talk to you?
• 38:29
  Sure.
• 38:29
  He said, I know how to do the door, but they don't wanna do it the way
• 38:32
  I, I know how to do it, and if they know I'm talking to you, they fire me.
• 38:35
  I said, no.
• 38:36
  First of all, you're not getting fired.
• 38:37
  Second of all, tell me what you're talking about.
• 38:38
  I said, well, just take the hydraulic thing off the convertible and
• 38:41
  put it on the B pillar, and you got a hydraulic belt and you're
• 38:44
  gonna have a glass go up and back.
• 38:45
  Nobody gives a damn.
• 38:46
  The hydraulic will take almost anyway, so I take him and I walk him back in.
• 38:50
  I said, gentlemen, this young man just told me the following story and
• 38:53
  I have now given him full charge.
• 38:56
  I'm coming back next week.
• 38:57
  If I push a button that the door opens, we stay alive, and if not,
• 39:00
  we close it down and if anything happens to the kid, whoever had
• 39:03
  anything to do with, it was out.
• 39:05
  I came back a week later and they had it out there and all I had to do
• 39:08
  is push the button and it opened up.
• 39:09
  There was a flock that I didn't know about until we're now selling the cars.
• 39:15
  I am in Philadelphia with a Brooklyn in my driveway with the galling doors up, so I
• 39:19
  can just sit and look at it, and it starts to rain, so I run out to close the door.
• 39:24
  Well, the hydraulics, it takes six seconds to close.
• 39:27
  That means if I wanted to get in, it would take six seconds to open and
• 39:31
  six seconds to close in the rain.
• 39:35
  I'm dead.
• 39:36
  I am absolutely dead.
• 39:37
  What am I gonna do?
• 39:38
  I called my friend Frank Turner, a inventor in Graham, Texas,
• 39:42
  who's the genius of the world.
• 39:44
  I said, Frank, I got a problem.
• 39:46
  I don't know how to solve it.
• 39:47
  I tell him what it is.
• 39:48
  He says, I'll be right there.
• 39:49
  And he flies into Livonia and he tell, I'm taking one of the cars.
• 39:53
  I'll be back next week.
• 39:54
  And about five days later, he calls me up.
• 39:56
  He said, I'll be there in about half a day.
• 39:58
  I'm already on the way.
• 39:59
  I said, and he said, and it's fixed.
• 40:01
  All right, now we come.
• 40:02
  Everybody comes out there and he says, push the button.
• 40:05
  I push the button.
• 40:05
  He goes, push the button and close.
• 40:07
  It goes, stop six inches above it and closes.
• 40:09
  Oh my God.
• 40:10
  That's perfect.
• 40:11
  That's absolutely amazingly perfect.
• 40:13
  And you can put your hand there.
• 40:14
  Unlike the hydraulic, it doesn't go break your hand off.
• 40:17
  It's flexible.
• 40:19
  Oh my God, what did you do?
• 40:21
  How much is it gonna cost?
• 40:22
  How long is it gonna take?
• 40:23
  The tool?
• 40:25
  He said, nothing.
• 40:25
  You don't have to do almost anything.
• 40:27
  You drain the hydraulic.
• 40:28
  I put air in it.
• 40:29
  The engine makes the air.
• 40:30
  You got a box frame, air doors end the story.
• 40:35
  I loved it.
• 40:36
  And I loved him.
• 40:37
  So it begs the question, why did John want gold wing doors?
• 40:41
  Because it's cool.
• 40:42
  And I told him, if you build a car and he doesn't have gold
• 40:45
  wing doors, God bless him.
• 40:46
  He's gonna have to spend a lot of money on advertising.
• 40:48
  The Gold Wing doors will sell it.
• 40:50
  People like the gold wing doors.
• 40:51
  It makes 'em feel they're in a really special, rich car.
• 40:54
  It makes 'em feel rich, it makes it special.
• 40:56
  That's why they buy the car.
• 40:57
  They didn't buy the Delo and they didn't buy the Brooklyn for any
• 41:00
  other reason is they wanted it.
• 41:01
  Nobody needed either one of 'em.
• 41:03
  The seventies were seen as sort of a safety era.
• 41:05
  There were no convertibles.
• 41:06
  There were issues with the Pintos blowing up.
• 41:09
  People were really concerned with safety.
• 41:11
  You've got Volvo and Saab out there.
• 41:13
  Mercedes is right there too.
• 41:15
  Was the intent to compete with those companies that were already lining
• 41:19
  themselves with the safety brand?
• 41:21
  Is that really where the SV one came from?
• 41:24
  From the day I woke up and said, I'm gonna build it to the day it
• 41:27
  came off the line with all the engineers in Livonia, 200 of them, no
• 41:31
  computers at that time, by the way.
• 41:33
  I did all of that in two years.
• 41:35
  Met more than all the safety regulations, and it was the safest car ever built.
• 41:39
  The Bricklin SV one, ingenious things that nobody ever copied, nobody wanted
• 41:43
  to do it because you lose money.
• 41:44
  If you have a bumper, 10 miles an hour, no damage.
• 41:47
  That makes you a lot of money.
• 41:48
  So that's why the factories didn't jump on the five mile an hour, no damage.
• 41:52
  It was $1,200.
• 41:53
  They were gonna lose a car every time you bumped up the bank.
• 41:55
  So they didn't want it.
• 41:56
  I didn't wanna make money that way.
• 41:58
  I wanted to sell you something cool that my kids would love.
• 42:00
  What did you envision for the future of the SV one?
• 42:03
  What was the long-term vision where other cars are designed in the work?
• 42:07
  Was there an ssv two?
• 42:08
  Nah, nah.
• 42:10
  The next car we were gonna build was called the chairman's car.
• 42:13
  I wanted an all black car, which is a bitch, by the way, 'cause
• 42:16
  they didn't have acrylic that way.
• 42:17
  But I was trying to talk them into it with all silver trim, and it was
• 42:20
  gonna sell for $15,000 or something.
• 42:23
  No big deal.
• 42:24
  I mean, then it was a big deal and it was going to be called the chairman's
• 42:27
  car, not to sell a whole bunch, you know?
• 42:29
  50 a month.
• 42:30
  We were trying to get up to a thousand a month with the other thing to meet
• 42:33
  this four year supply of Wonders.
• 42:35
  We have, what was the chairman?
• 42:36
  Was it a big four door or what?
• 42:38
  No, same.
• 42:38
  Same exact car painted, just black and silver.
• 42:40
  It was no big, it was just a, an upgrade of what you had.
• 42:43
  Sort of like the John Player edition.
• 42:45
  Lotus's.
• 42:46
  Same idea.
• 42:47
  The black and Gold outfit.
• 42:48
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 42:49
  It was the acrylic that was gonna look and the silver everywhere
• 42:52
  you had the name, it was silver.
• 42:53
  Every, I mean silver.
• 42:54
  So then you know every, the problem was everybody was gonna steal
• 42:57
  everything we had, but other than that small little problem, because at
• 43:00
  this time you're talking about Henry Ford ii, who's at the head of Ford.
• 43:03
  So did you also cross paths with Lee Iacocca?
• 43:06
  Oh, Lee Iacocca.
• 43:07
  I'll tell you that story.
• 43:09
  Alright.
• 43:09
  You just made my day.
• 43:10
  You got me into the good stories.
• 43:12
  I'm about to build the car.
• 43:13
  I made a deal with American Motors.
• 43:15
  It's been engineered with the American Motors four Barrel and we've done
• 43:19
  the 50,000 mile test, which is a royal fucking pain in the ass.
• 43:22
  And I, I mean, it is seriously a pain.
• 43:25
  I get a call, Mr.
• 43:26
  Bricklin, we have a problem.
• 43:27
  The order we gave, the contract we have, they're not gonna sell us yet.
• 43:31
  Ah, are you kidding me?
• 43:32
  No.
• 43:33
  And we just got a call from Berg's office.
• 43:35
  I said, well call back the office and tell him I wanna be
• 43:37
  in his office tomorrow morning.
• 43:38
  And I get a call now the secretary tell the secretary he would like
• 43:42
  to see me tomorrow morning, or he can read about it in the paper.
• 43:45
  Okay, I'll be there nine o'clock.
• 43:47
  So I go there with a couple of my guys.
• 43:49
  He has a couple of his guys in there and he said, uh, I'm only
• 43:53
  seeing you because you made a threat and I don't like threats.
• 43:56
  I said, no, you de broke a contract.
• 43:58
  You have a contract with me and I spent $3 million engineering that car with your
• 44:01
  engine in there and you're selling me.
• 44:03
  You're not gonna give it to me.
• 44:04
  I don't think so.
• 44:05
  It's not the way the world works, Mr.
• 44:07
  Gutenberg, you're throwing me out the window.
• 44:09
  I'm going out hanging on your tie 'cause I'm leaning on your stomach because
• 44:12
  when I walk out here without an engine, I'm gonna Washington to talk about
• 44:15
  how the big three had decided they didn't want me building safety car.
• 44:19
  And let's see how much fun that's gonna be by not just honoring your contract, you.
• 44:25
  It was pretty vulgar.
• 44:27
  He said, I'm gonna tell you why you're not getting it.
• 44:30
  I've worked a long time to sell these cars and now I can sell every car I build,
• 44:34
  and every time I give you an it's a car I can't build, never going to happen.
• 44:38
  I said, okay.
• 44:39
  Then when I'm in Washington and you can start reading the papers about how you
• 44:43
  break contracts and how you're looking to put me out of business, but you're
• 44:46
  in collusion with all the other boys out there that they think you're doing
• 44:49
  anyhow, then you'll see whether it was worth breaking the contract with me to
• 44:52
  sell a few cars instead of keeping a word.
• 44:54
  You okay?
• 44:56
  I'm gonna give you seven engines.
• 44:57
  Get the hell outta the office.
• 44:58
  Don't call me again.
• 44:59
  Thank you, sir.
• 45:00
  I'm sorry if I was rude, but you had put me in a position where you're putting
• 45:04
  me out of business and it was really a little bit, let's say uncomfortable.
• 45:08
  So please accept my a apology.
• 45:09
  Get the hell outta here.
• 45:10
  You a little.
• 45:12
  Okay.
• 45:12
  Now I go back to the office, what am I gonna do?
• 45:14
  I gotta replace the engine in something that fits and do a 50,000 mile test again.
• 45:19
  Oh boy.
• 45:20
  So I walk into the office of Libo and Keith is sitting there and
• 45:23
  another guy that I don't know.
• 45:24
  Come on back, Keith.
• 45:26
  He said, listen Malcolm, I've been asking you to do a story and not
• 45:29
  only don't you do a story, but when my photographer tried to sneak into
• 45:33
  your place, your broke his camera.
• 45:34
  Yep.
• 45:34
  We told everybody, don't go on our property and start trying to sneak in.
• 45:37
  We're not gonna do it.
• 45:38
  Malcolm, what is wrong with you?
• 45:40
  It's Subaru.
• 45:41
  You knew our value.
• 45:42
  Did you forget?
• 45:42
  He said, no, I'm just not ready.
• 45:44
  I don't know who you building it yet.
• 45:45
  I don't know a whole bunch of stuff.
• 45:47
  And why would I go premature?
• 45:48
  I can't do anything with it if a lot of people start calling me up.
• 45:51
  I'm telling you, you're making a mistake, Malcolm.
• 45:53
  And by the way, why is House Sperlock in your waiting room?
• 45:56
  I said, who's Hal Sperlock?
• 45:57
  He said he is.
• 45:57
  I a cook's right here, ma'am.
• 45:58
  No kidding.
• 45:59
  He's out there.
• 46:00
  Keith, tell you what, you got a story.
• 46:02
  Gimme a call next week.
• 46:03
  I'll give you whatever the hell you want.
• 46:04
  You can even take pictures as long as we are a little bit clear about
• 46:08
  what, where we're at in the game.
• 46:09
  Thank you so much.
• 46:10
  And I push him out the door.
• 46:11
  How screw up comes in.
• 46:12
  Hey Halal, how are you?
• 46:13
  Uh, why are you here?
• 46:15
  Leon Coka sent me.
• 46:16
  Oh yeah.
• 46:16
  How come?
• 46:17
  Well, he wants to know what you're doing.
• 46:18
  Is it okay?
• 46:19
  Absolutely.
• 46:20
  You wanna go see it?
• 46:21
  Absolutely.
• 46:22
  I am so glad you came.
• 46:24
  Don't you have a 3 51 Windsor in Canada?
• 46:27
  Yep.
• 46:27
  I need more Canadian content.
• 46:29
  What do you think about selling Maybe about a thousand engines a month.
• 46:32
  No problem.
• 46:33
  I'll handle it.
• 46:34
  Great.
• 46:34
  I'll take it down.
• 46:35
  You can go look at whatever you wanna go look at.
• 46:37
  He does, and we get a contract.
• 46:38
  Fast forward, we've now re-engineered it.
• 46:41
  Not a hot, if it fits pretty good, it's not as good as the American Motor 360.
• 46:45
  And we did the 50,000 mile test, and now we're getting ready.
• 46:49
  It's Christmas time.
• 46:50
  I'm in the LA airport with the kids and my wife and I get a call from my secretary.
• 46:55
  Ford is not gonna ship us the engines.
• 46:57
  Oh my God.
• 46:58
  Here we go again.
• 46:58
  I call up Henry Ford.
• 47:00
  He doesn't take my call.
• 47:01
  I call up blue guy Coca.
• 47:02
  He doesn't take my call.
• 47:03
  I call Hal Bur, he takes my call.
• 47:05
  Now, I can't believe I'm gonna have to tell you this, but I've just been told
• 47:09
  you're not gonna sell me the engines, and I want you to know where I am.
• 47:12
  I'm in the LA airport, I'm about to get on the plane to fight Acapulco.
• 47:15
  If I don't hear back that those engines are coming, like we have in the contract,
• 47:20
  I'm getting on a different plane.
• 47:21
  I'm going to Washington, and you know where it goes from there.
• 47:23
  He said Malcolm, I honestly did not know that they and anybody
• 47:27
  said that it had to be our lawyers.
• 47:28
  And I certainly wasn't.
• 47:29
  Let me get to the bottom of it.
• 47:31
  I said, but you gotta do it really fast 'cause I'm not going to apora.
• 47:34
  So he calls me back, he said, no problem.
• 47:35
  You got the answers said What happened?
• 47:37
  Oh, the lawyers came up with the following scenario, which by the way is not wrong.
• 47:42
  And they said, what are we doing?
• 47:44
  We are selling 'em a thousand engines.
• 47:46
  If anything happens, we're liable for what?
• 47:48
  We're not making enough money to give a damn.
• 47:50
  So we're doing something that doesn't do anything that has
• 47:53
  a liability attached to it.
• 47:54
  We recommend you don't go forward.
• 47:56
  He said, we made a deal.
• 47:56
  You got the deal.
• 47:57
  Don't worry about it.
• 47:58
  Thank you very much Al.
• 47:59
  And they, they honored the deal.
• 48:02
  Now fast forward, how does the SV one story end The deal was real simple
• 48:07
  from the premier, who I thought was a great premier, his goal of why he
• 48:10
  financed the factory, which was an old paint factory they gave us that
• 48:14
  we had to turn into a real factory.
• 48:15
  He funded the second part of the money.
• 48:17
  I put in the money for all the engineering and the prototypes.
• 48:20
  He put in the money for the factory and he did it because he wanted publicity for
• 48:23
  New Brunswick when nobody ever heard of.
• 48:25
  And they all considered they're fishermen and woodcutters and
• 48:28
  they didn't know anything else.
• 48:28
  And this would put 'em right out there because this was about
• 48:32
  as outstanding as anything.
• 48:33
  And I brought him around with me everywhere TV shows, talking
• 48:37
  in the Harvard business.
• 48:38
  Well, he was with me and he loved the attention he was getting 'cause it gave
• 48:42
  him a bigger stage and a bigger voice.
• 48:44
  And he was a bachelor.
• 48:45
  So we are now friends.
• 48:46
  They're putting in money and one day he comes walking in and
• 48:49
  says, I need three brick ones.
• 48:51
  Okay, what color do you want?
• 48:52
  Tells me Where do you want 'em?
• 48:54
  Tells me, I said, what do you want 'em for?
• 48:55
  He said, oh, I'm calling an election.
• 48:57
  First car is gonna pull the crowd.
• 48:58
  The second car comes in with my mother.
• 49:00
  The third car comes in with me the day after the election.
• 49:03
  Front page of the papers is a cartoon character of him flying
• 49:07
  out of the top of a bricklin with the gold wing doors open and him in
• 49:09
  the Superman, and it says, Premier.
• 49:12
  Premier win the largest popular vote in the history of New Brunswick elections.
• 49:16
  He wins the Bricklin election and I go, oh, I own this province da.
• 49:24
  Not that I was gonna do anything different, but I liked it.
• 49:26
  It sounded like somehow it said worked out to my favor.
• 49:29
  It is what I thought.
• 49:31
  Well, three months later, premier comes in to say hello with the
• 49:35
  Can I see your loan, Malcolm?
• 49:37
  Yeah.
• 49:37
  He said, I'm closing it down.
• 49:39
  I said, excuse me.
• 49:40
  You do understand we got 46,000 back orders and we got 1200
• 49:43
  people making more money than anybody ever made in the province.
• 49:46
  We're happy as hell and you're getting all the publicity ever want.
• 49:49
  Is that a bad joke?
• 49:50
  He said, no.
• 49:50
  Let me tell you what's happening since the election.
• 49:53
  You know the one, the Bricklin election?
• 49:55
  Well, when I come down every day to talk to the press, there's only
• 49:58
  two questions they wanna hear from.
• 49:59
  How's Malcolm and how's the car?
• 50:01
  That's it.
• 50:02
  They have zero interest in anything else.
• 50:04
  I sold my political future and voice box because I used the car to win and I won't.
• 50:10
  So big.
• 50:11
  So here's what I'm going to do.
• 50:12
  I thought about this for a long time and I really hate to do it, but I'm doing it.
• 50:16
  It's either this or my political career.
• 50:18
  So I am gonna close you.
• 50:19
  I'm gonna get abused, but then I'm going to election and a year from now it's
• 50:23
  gonna be my election and I'm gonna win.
• 50:24
  And he did.
• 50:25
  Everything you just said, and that was the end of that story.
• 50:28
  What did you learn from the experience?
• 50:30
  What could have been done differently?
• 50:32
  What would you have done differently?
• 50:33
  What would you, you know, what would you hope from the Canadian government?
• 50:36
  So we built that car and we did it inexpensively and
• 50:38
  we had 46,000 back orders.
• 50:41
  By the way, I learned that I can for $30 million, That was the penalty of ego.
• 50:46
  It be the great title of a book.
• 50:47
  The Penalty of Ego.
• 50:49
  I like that.
• 50:49
  Yeah.
• 50:49
  Oh boy.
• 50:50
  I bet you that kills a lot of people.
• 50:52
  So obviously a lot of years passed from when the Brickland factory in
• 50:56
  Canada closed and things like that.
• 50:58
  So take us on a quick journey between the years 1975 and 2000.
• 51:03
  What were you up to?
• 51:04
  Well, let's see.
• 51:05
  In the end of the 79, I'm at the first automotive news that they had
• 51:10
  ever was at the Hyatt Hotel across from the Ford headquarters and Henry
• 51:14
  Ford was the guest speaker, and the next year I was the speaker.
• 51:18
  The next John De Hoan was the speaker I had my good friend, Turner.
• 51:22
  The inventor called me up and says, Malcolm, I need your help.
• 51:25
  Anything you want, Frank.
• 51:26
  He said, I have built a new kind of engine that is beyond revolutionary.
• 51:30
  He said, it creates a hundred foot pounds of torque and a hundred R p
• 51:35
  m and goes up to over 7,500 R P M.
• 51:38
  I said, well, he said, at 500 RRP m I can get 500 horsepower.
• 51:42
  I got a 500 horsepower, a 200 horsepower, a 20 horsepower engine made on Dinos.
• 51:48
  They'll revolutionize the world.
• 51:50
  Malcolm U I know don't know shit about an engine.
• 51:52
  You can take mine apart and put it back together in five minutes
• 51:56
  with the screwdriver and a fire.
• 51:58
  There's only eight moving parts.
• 52:00
  I said, that sounds great.
• 52:01
  He said, yeah, but I can't get any publicity or anybody to talk to,
• 52:04
  so I wanna make a deal with you.
• 52:05
  Put your name on the engine with me.
• 52:07
  Get me publicity.
• 52:08
  I'll give you 50%.
• 52:09
  I said, stop.
• 52:10
  I'm not taking 50% and I don't wanna put my name on something that you created
• 52:14
  That does not feel good, Malcolm.
• 52:16
  We're not gonna get any attention any other way.
• 52:18
  I said, okay, here's the deal.
• 52:19
  We'll put my name on it.
• 52:20
  We'll call it the Brooklyn Turner Power Plant.
• 52:22
  Good enough, good.
• 52:23
  I'll get your publicity.
• 52:24
  But publicity doesn't count unless it turns into something.
• 52:26
  If it turns into something, I want 10%.
• 52:28
  You've helped me all along.
• 52:30
  I want to be able to say I do own a piece of it so I'm not lying about it.
• 52:33
  And then I am excited.
• 52:34
  I'll be that when I come see it.
• 52:36
  So I fly down and boy, he puts it on the, the most amazing thing
• 52:39
  you ever saw a little one about this big as 20 horsepower beyond?
• 52:42
  I didn't know too much about anything, but I, when I saw this, I knew
• 52:45
  there was had something fabulous.
• 52:47
  So I called up and account illustrated it.
• 52:48
  I told 'em exactly what the story was and they came down and looked at it,
• 52:51
  put it on a thought and went nuts.
• 52:52
  Put it on the cover of the magazine.
• 52:54
  The only thing that they did that was hurtful, I thought they called it the
• 52:57
  Brickland Power Plant on the cover.
• 52:59
  They did call it the Brickland Turner when they wrote the article,
• 53:02
  but it did not make me feel good.
• 53:04
  An incredible, in fact, the article was basically saying unbelievable.
• 53:07
  But we saw it all work.
• 53:08
  So now I got the magazine, I got the guy, I have the film.
• 53:11
  That's what my talk is about in automotive news.
• 53:13
  And I have a deal with Henry that when I'm finished talking, I go over
• 53:17
  there and say hello for a half hour.
• 53:18
  I get finish my speak.
• 53:19
  I take the little engine and my wife at the time and we go up to
• 53:23
  the 14th floor to go meet Henry.
• 53:25
  Now the 14th floor was Henry's floor.
• 53:27
  That was him.
• 53:28
  He had the floor five times as wide as the normal hallway.
• 53:31
  And everything was so quiet.
• 53:32
  All the people were men, secretaries wearing gray suits and white gloves.
• 53:37
  And Henry Ford's office was the corner office and I don't know who the hell
• 53:41
  they were or the others, but nobody ever seemed to walk out in the hall.
• 53:44
  So I come there and we sit and talk.
• 53:46
  And of course my lovely wife, he definitely paid a lot of
• 53:49
  attention to, I take the 20 horsepower and I hand it to him.
• 53:52
  I said, here's the deal.
• 53:53
  Everything I'm about to tell you is absolute fact.
• 53:56
  When you read the article, here's the magazine, I'm gonna give it to you.
• 53:59
  You own it for five years.
• 54:00
  Whatever you get from it, it's yours.
• 54:02
  But you have to promise you engineer it into a car with that engine.
• 54:06
  Henry, you could own the car business.
• 54:08
  Oh, I couldn't own the car business.
• 54:10
  Why Henry?
• 54:11
  He said, because I don't have enough money.
• 54:12
  I smile.
• 54:13
  I said, Henry, you give me your name for a day and a half.
• 54:15
  I'll get you all the money you want.
• 54:16
  Ha ha ha.
• 54:17
  I like the deal.
• 54:18
  Okay, great.
• 54:19
  What do we do next?
• 54:20
  I said to him, he said, I'm gonna send my head engineer down to Graham,
• 54:23
  Texas to see it for himself, even though it says it in the magazine.
• 54:26
  I want him to come back and tell me.
• 54:27
  Fabulous.
• 54:28
  We make a date.
• 54:29
  I fly down to Graham and engineer is sitting in their office waiting for me.
• 54:33
  Comes over to me.
• 54:33
  Can I talk to you, Mr.
• 54:34
  Brooklyn?
• 54:35
  Yeah.
• 54:35
  He pulls me aside.
• 54:36
  He says, I'm here to invalidate the program.
• 54:38
  Whoa.
• 54:38
  Invalidate the program.
• 54:40
  And then I got it.
• 54:41
  It was like, what is wrong with me?
• 54:43
  I'm asking this man, if it is all the things I say, he has to throw everything
• 54:47
  he owns away his, his transmissions, his bodies, his tooling, everything because
• 54:53
  it makes it all different, smaller, blah.
• 54:55
  The balance.
• 54:56
  It's a whole new guy.
• 54:57
  He can't do that.
• 54:58
  If he wanted to, they would fire him before they'd throw everything their
• 55:01
  own away and then invest it over here.
• 55:03
  And I went, that's why nobody ever went for the engine.
• 55:05
  Nobody wants to replace what they got already.
• 55:07
  It cost him much damn money.
• 55:08
  And so I said out loud, the next time I have anything to do with an
• 55:12
  engine, I'm gonna put it in my car.
• 55:14
  Fast forward, Leon Coca retires.
• 55:17
  He lives in California.
• 55:19
  I'm living in Malibu.
• 55:20
  I'm building electric bikes with Dr.
• 55:23
  Malcolm Curry, who had just retired as chairman of used aircraft and
• 55:26
  did the EV one for General Motors and hated it when they pulled 'em
• 55:30
  all back and start crushing 'em.
• 55:32
  And let's figure out how to build cars and used cars.
• 55:35
  Well, we'll put batteries in them.
• 55:36
  Oh, remember we have lead acid and nickel metal hydride.
• 55:39
  That's your choice.
• 55:40
  So we use little batteries that came from computers, but we got it really fine if
• 55:44
  you like 40 or 50 miles between charger.
• 55:46
  One day I'm driving and I realize, oh my God, what happens when all of
• 55:50
  a sudden I run out of electricity?
• 55:51
  There is nothing.
• 55:52
  Nobody gives a damn about electric cars.
• 55:54
  So I tell Dr.
• 55:55
  Carr, you know what?
• 55:56
  We made a mistake.
• 55:56
  We've spent a year, so what?
• 55:58
  Nobody's gonna buy it.
• 55:59
  I can't sell this crap.
• 56:00
  I won't ride it.
• 56:01
  So he agrees with me and he says, we sat around.
• 56:03
  What can we do?
• 56:04
  Does something in transportation electrically?
• 56:07
  We came up with, and we started the electric bike industry
• 56:09
  in the United States with a.
• 56:12
  To go to Google to see it.
• 56:13
  So Lehigh Coco is now retired.
• 56:15
  He is living there.
• 56:15
  He gives me a call, you know I'm retired, but I hate to be retired.
• 56:18
  I see you're building electric bikes.
• 56:20
  Yep.
• 56:21
  He said, I wanna be in that business.
• 56:23
  I said, I think that's great.
• 56:24
  I think you're doing great with it.
• 56:25
  It's an okay business.
• 56:26
  It doesn't turn me on by the way.
• 56:28
  I said to him, what would you like?
• 56:29
  He said, well, I'd like to know about it.
• 56:31
  Do you mind could come on over and saying, hi, come over.
• 56:34
  And he has a room.
• 56:35
  All four wars are filled with the front covers of him being on the front cover.
• 56:38
  He was on time thing 10,000 times in news.
• 56:41
  I mean, that man really got publicity.
• 56:44
  So anyhow, we start talking about it and every day, for 30 days, I picked him up.
• 56:47
  We had breakfast in his house.
• 56:49
  He had somebody there serving it.
• 56:50
  And then we'd take, get my car, show 'em electric bikes and show 'em what
• 56:53
  happens and show 'em where we're producing it at the Burbank Airport
• 56:57
  because every there they were looking to have environmentally clean stuff
• 57:01
  in their facilities on the air.
• 57:03
  Anyhow.
• 57:03
  So after 30 days, he says to me, okay, you're saying I can use the guy
• 57:07
  you have in Taiwan to do the bike?
• 57:09
  Yeah.
• 57:10
  And you can get the batteries from Yeah.
• 57:12
  So I can actually copy anything I want.
• 57:13
  Yeah.
• 57:14
  What do I care?
• 57:15
  He said, there's a guy who's working for you.
• 57:17
  Turns out that guy was married to my first wife, still married to her by the way.
• 57:21
  So I hired him 'cause I wanted them to be really happy.
• 57:24
  He said, can I hire him to be my president?
• 57:25
  Absolutely.
• 57:26
  He'd love to be away from me and be his own boss.
• 57:29
  And he knows everything He.
• 57:30
  Smart move.
• 57:32
  So they designed their bike and they do their bike and it's starting to
• 57:34
  come in and one of the batteries catches fire and burns out a garage.
• 57:38
  So it scares him as it should and he decides to get out of the bike industry.
• 57:43
  But here's where it shows how smart this man is.
• 57:46
  Now he's read up everything there is about electric and deaths and that and
• 57:51
  the government and the next thing you know, he is buying used golf carts and
• 57:56
  converting them to electric and giving them away and getting $10,000 from the
• 58:01
  government and it cost him about $2,500 to buy and put this crap together.
• 58:05
  I thought.
• 58:06
  Now there is a smart man that what a great recovery from a burn down.
• 58:10
  How cool is that?
• 58:12
  So Malcolm, as we prepare ourselves for part two of this episode, when we
• 58:16
  talk more about visionary vehicles, any spoilers, shoutouts, promotions,
• 58:21
  anything else you'd like to share?
• 58:22
  Alright, so you've got my good stories.
• 58:24
  Now I'm going to tell you something.
• 58:26
  I'm gonna leave you with it and I'll give you a hint.
• 58:28
  I'm going to be building a four door of the car I have right now, and it's
• 58:31
  gonna run on a new kind of hydrogen, a liquid hydrogen and room temperature
• 58:36
  that is combustible but not volatile.
• 58:38
  We are almost signed with all the paperwork to have it for the
• 58:42
  United States for vehicles, and I will say no more, and it will
• 58:46
  revolutionize the world as we know it.
• 58:47
  Three minutes, you fill it up and oh, by the way, you'll get a
• 58:50
  hundred to 150 miles to a gallon.
• 58:52
  Unbelievable.
• 58:53
  But it all works.
• 58:54
  And I went looking for it.
• 58:55
  Didn't expect to find that, but I found it the most amazing, truly changed our world.
• 58:59
  It comes from water, nothing's put in it, and it turns into a liquid
• 59:03
  hydrogen at room temperature.
• 59:04
  I mean, I have already tested this over thousands of people and 99.999
• 59:10
  said, how do I buy it right now?
• 59:11
  But it's getting better because what we're about to do, we haven't even told anybody,
• 59:16
  and it will change the world we know.
• 59:20
  How's that one for a sort of modest exclusive?
• 59:23
  Yeah.
• 59:24
  Throughout his career, Malcolm Bricklin has been known for his unconventional
• 59:27
  ideas and his willingness to take risks.
• 59:30
  While his ventures have not always been successful, he has remained a respected
• 59:34
  figure in the automotive industry and a symbol of American entrepreneurship.
• 59:38
  He has also been the subject of numerous books, documentaries, and
• 59:42
  articles, chronicling his many successes and setbacks in the business world.
• 59:46
  If you'd like to learn more about Malcolm and keep up with all the
• 59:49
  progress over at Visionary Vehicles, be sure to log on to www.vvcars.com.
• 59:58
  Or follow him on social via LinkedIn or Facebook.
• 1:00:01
  Well, Malcolm, I'll say this in closing.
• 1:00:03
  I'm really looking forward to part two of this story when we get to dig a little
• 1:00:07
  bit deeper into visionary vehicles and kind of expand on what you're doing now.
• 1:00:11
  This has been a wonderful walk down.
• 1:00:14
  Well, I guess it's a speedy walk down memory lane.
• 1:00:18
  Thank you very much for all this insight and information.
• 1:00:21
  Go to vv cars.com and see the Brooklyn e v three and all that stuff and know,
• 1:00:26
  I'm not sure I will open my mouth or not, but I might tell you what we're
• 1:00:30
  really gonna produce for the world.
• 1:00:32
  Not that after spending six years and millions of dollars, I found
• 1:00:36
  something that does not have to worry about electricity being not
• 1:00:39
  enough or that we don't have enough chargers by about 2 million minus.
• 1:00:43
  And if you don't own a garage, charge your car.
• 1:00:45
  Don't ever buy an electric vehicle 'cause you will hate it.
• 1:00:48
  We're prepared for part two.
• 1:00:49
  We're prepared.
• 1:00:49
  Believe me, we've got questions.
• 1:00:51
  Oh good.
• 1:00:52
  Good, good guys.
• 1:00:53
  It was a pleasure talking to you.
• 1:00:54
  Alright, very good.
• 1:00:55
  Thank you Malcolm.
• 1:00:56
  Bye.
• 1:00:56
  Thank you.
• 1:01:02
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• 1:01:05
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• 1:01:09
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• 1:01:12
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• 1:01:17
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• 1:01:25
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• 1:01:27
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• 1:01:29
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• 1:01:32
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