Aarian Marshall of Wired reports The Righteous EV Owners Who Won’t Let Their Broken Cars Die | WIRED
I heard about it on Marketplace https://www.marketplace.org/story/2026/03/10/who-makes-car-repairs-if-the-maker-went-bankrupt#when-a-carmaker-goes-bankrupt-who-can-do-repairs
This is the risk of being a first adopter.
+1
While it’s possible that Vinfast will be more successful than Fisker was, IMO, those who buy a Vinfast EV at this point are taking a HUGE risk.
And VinFast has a much more significant industrial and sales footprint than Fisker had!
Yes, Vinfast has a large industrial base, as well as the backing of a mega-millionaire. But, all of the car magazines rated their initial offerings in The US as… I’ll be kind… NOT ready for prime time.
If they can vastly improve the performance and the driving dynamics of their newer offerings, they might have a chance in the US marketplace, but I still think that someone would have to be a gambler if he was to buy one before they had been operating successfully on this side of the Pacific for at least 3 years.
Agree VinFast created a product with no knowledge of their competition and the market.
You can’t just design a car and call it done. You need people develop the pleasability features of the car. That takes experience which VinFast has clearly not developed or hired.
Early in Hyundai and Kias US history, they hire experienced engineers from US car companies that could tune the cars for the market.
From a twenty article ot seems that us production of Vinfast won’t happen anytime soon and dealers have walked away from the brand. Tarrifs and killing ev incentives mean Vinfast is putting more effort into Vietnam and emerging Asian markets instead of trying to increase the 1,400 vehicles they sold up to Sept 2025. Still shows a Lease deal on the website.
Dealer network on the west coast is only in California, same with Fisker, although iveseen two Fisker oceans here.
The mention of early Subarus brings to mind Malcom Bricklin, Malcolm Bricklin - Wikipedia the original importer of the Fuji Heavy Industries/Subaru FF1, the manufacturer of the Bricklin SV-1, the importer of the Bertone X1/9 after FIAT left the US market and the infamous Yugo.
To be blunt all the original vehicles were garbage, totally unacceptable for the US market and with the exception of the Subaru, all left the owners hanging.
What made Subaru different was the commitment and strong financial backing of Fuji Heavy Industries, the Japanese government and various partnerships with other vehicle manufacturers that allowed the development of more competitive vehicles.
My point is that we have such a long and rich history of innovative, “bleeding edge” technology manufacturers going bankrupt (think Tucker 48) that it’s a safe bet to assume that any new manufacturer will have a lifespan of a mushroom on a summer day. Caveat Emptor
Contrary to popular mythology, there was nothing “bleeding” about the Tucker.
Air cooled rear engines - done long before from Tatra, VW, Benz and others
Airplane engine - used because they had no other viable choice
4 wheel independent suspension - done long before.
The 3rd headlight - done a decade before from Delahaye and others. Tucker appears to be the first steerable light so one for Tucker
The safety windshield - first used in 1927, standard on Ford’s 1928 Model A
The perimeter frame and rollover protection - used in the 1934 Chrysler Airflow, the first uni-body car was a 1923 Lancia Lambda
The pre-selector gearbox - invented in 1920, production use of the Wilson gearbox in 1928 and beyond
The safety crash space below the dash - was there because Tucker chose to not install seatbelts in the car.
The Tucker was collection of existing technologies.
While that is true, it’s also true that the major auto manufacturers chose to ignore most of those advances until at least a decade after Tucker introduced them in one unified package.
Which advances and which manufacturers? Just the US ones? Or European? Or Japanese?
And what constitutes “major”? Ford, GM or Chrysler? AMC? VW? Renault? Fiat? Tatra?
The car that best fits the “advanced technology” in the Tucker was found in the Czech 1934 Tatra T77 - 4 wheel independent suspension with an air-cooled rear engine V8 with a uni-body chassis and a 3rd headlight on the 77a model produced 14 years before the Tucker. The Tatra is the only other carmaker that built a mainstream (for Europe) full size, 4 door, rear engined, V8 luxury car.
I made a mistake, though; the flat 6 Tucker engine was converted to water cooled from its air-cooled base design.
The rear suspension was a rubber torsion tube swing arm style that would have created a lot of oversteer paired with the double A-arm front - a front suspension that tended to snap under the Tucker’s weight. The manual transmission was fragile, and the automatic a disaster.
Each used manufacturer used pieces of the advanced tech featured in the Tucker as in my earlier post. Each manufacturer chose the technology that best fit their designs and market at the time. Just because Tucker was unique, did not make the technology better for the US market.
I was referring to just the “big 3” American automakers
Clearly, otherwise they wouldn’t have gone belly-up after producing just 50 pilot vehicles.
Tucker had far more issues than cars that didn’t quite meet the market…Financial “sleight of hand” brought Tucker down.
There is a looooong line of slick-talking automobile creators like Tucker. Malcom Bricklin, John DeLorean, Jerry Wiegert (the Vector), Liz Carmichael (the Dale) or even the Elio’s creator, Paul Elio, all flirted with supposedly innovative concepts that evaporated when people looked into the finances.
Allegedly… and a US Court found him NOT Guilty of Financial Fraud.
The allegations were proved to be baseless, and Preston Tucker was acquitted. But by then, all of the bad publicity made it impossible for him to secure funding, and the company went belly-up.
There are electric buses sitting idle because the manufacturer has gone out of business and there are no spare parts or software support. There are some workarounds on parts but not on software. There needs to be a software bank where the documents and code are stored in case the vehicle is no longer supported.
How common was it though? I’ve heard of the Rolls-Royce Merlin.
That monster engine was never used in any production cars. However, after the war, it was used in a few “specials” that were used for speed trials.
The Merlin is an enormous engine wholly inappropriate for an auto.