Interesting story. Reminds me Silicon Valley’s Elizabeth Holmes episode. In both cases it seems possible the scammers actually didn’t start out being scammers, they thought they had a good idea that would support an ongoing business. It it pretty common for start ups here to fail. The difference is when they fail, the ethical solution failure mode is to just admit defeat, not try to keep it going on wishful thinking. A friend of mine business depending on his product passing a independent test. He spent many months preparing, yet it didn’t pass, and to his credit he immediately folded up the business. The stockholders lost all of their money.
Does anyone here remember the name of the movie about E. Holmes?
Very possible!
After all, a “business genius” whom I won’t name decided to buy into a new venture about a year ago, and between that new venture and some bad times in one of his other big businesses, he has lost $182 BILLION.
It could be a bad idea or a good one. We won’t know until the money runs out or they start delivering cars. Having enough investors to provide several years of liquidity is usually the big problem.
Wondering if these Packard fans have reached out to existing builders like Icon for advice, they could get an updated chassis and suspension from a supplier like Art Morrison along with a crate GM or Ford powertrain, Probably can’t build to Icon’s OCD standards but better than what they’re presenting now.
This company’s execs told my friend they don’t think they need to adhere to any federal requirements. They are ignorant.
“Low volume manufacturer” legislation exempts them from a lot of safety requirements but not emission controls. That is a sticking point for these companies because there are no emission legal crate motors accepted by all 50 states and the feds.
Companies like ICON bet around this by building custom cars from actual titled cars. Companies making repo Cobras don’t install engines, outside shops do. They are technically kit cars.
