Vector: Super-Car Status Elusive

Vector: Super-Car Status Elusive

By Dale Buss

LOS ANGLES -- Judging by where Vector Automotive’s booth was placed at the recently completed Los Angeles Auto Show, Gerald Wiegert has a long and arduous path ahead of him before he achieves the prominence he desires for Vector as a super-car brand.

The long-time automobile entrepreneur and vehicle designer was stuck with his prototype Vector WX-8 Hyper-Tech Performance Vehicle in an alcove outside the Los Angeles Convention Center’s small Concourse Hall, where rich guys’ cars typically are displayed. Inside the hall itself were global ultra-luxury paragons including Ferrari, Lotus, Rolls-Royce, Lamborghini, Aston Martin and Bentley.

Executives of the auto show didn’t return a phone call seeking comment on Vector’s floor placement. But as he personally promoted his new car and stock in his new company, Wiegert seemed typically unfazed by the apparent slight.

Of course, with Wiegert, there’s a huge question whether what he was displaying was sangfroid – or megalomaniacal delusions of grandeur. After all, this is a guy who once had to barricade himself in his offices to keep his own investors at bay.

“The market is very large and yet there is no American supercar,” the owner of Wilmington, Calif.-based Vector told AutoObserver in a phone interview from the floor of the show. “But this car is really beyond a super-car: It’s a hyper-performance road vehicle. Too many other things have been bu-----tted into the super-car category.

“My main reason for being here is that we’re kind of like the hometown-hero car producer. No one else in California has the kind of reputation we have – we pioneered navigation systems, heads-up displays, sequential shifting, advance composite materials and a whole list of other things.”

Whether because of or in spite of his reputation, if Wiegert indeed can end up actually getting the WX-8 into production, it would be a substantial machine. Projected top speed is 260 to 270mph and 0-to-60 in 3.3 seconds. The normally aspirated, seven-liter V8 engine would generate 600 horsepower, and the supercharged version would put out 750 horsepower. Wiegert says that, with a 10-liter engine, the WX-8 could generate  as much as 2,000 horsepower.

Moreover, the car has “a lot of durability and longevity,” easy maintenance, three-across seating, a flat floor and made-in-America pedigree, Wiegert notes.

The company says that the car’s “all-new aerodynamic high down-force” body incorporates “both hard-edge and soft design features including huge integrated inlet and exhaust ducts for heat exchangers, [and] an extended tail with a high-mounted, low-drag symmetrical inverted high down-force airfoil wing spoiler that enhances high-speed stability with aeroflaps.” The shell is constructed of ultra-light carbon fiber/E-glass structural body panels.

A wraparound glass-to-glass-edge canopy with invisible A pillars differentiates the Vector, as does its “jet-aircraft-type” instrumentation panel machined from billet aluminum.

Without a trace of irony for a man who has barely sniffed actual production of his super-cars, Wiegert allows that his company is “not trying to be Corvette or Viper. It’s something much more appealing to a global audience than the cars built here that are cost-effective but are not dynamic or futuristic-looking.”

At the same time, it’s entirely understandable that Wiegert shifts quickly from his current proposition to past glories. He began designing cars in 1971 fresh from college, including one called the Vector, which ended up being featured on the cover of Motor Trend magazine. Many auto enthusiasts and buff book editors subsequently became enamored of Wiegert even though his dazzling concept cars didn’t make it to production.

In 1989, Wiegert’s company, now known as Vector Aeromotive Corp., began production of a model called the W8. He obtained some financial backing from a public stock offering and began selling handcrafted cars for as much as $450,000 apiece. Wiegert sold a black W8 to tennis star Andre Agassi but warned him not to drive it until the Vector team could finish some final work on the car. Agassi drove it around his yard anyway and blew out the exhaust system and rear interior.

“We were literally the star of almost every auto show we attended,” Wiegert recalled recently. “We had advanced thinking and the hottest, fastest car in the world.”

Yet, when he debuted his WX-3 car in 1993, MegaTech, an Indonesian company, acquired a controlling interest in Vector. Soon, Wiegert and the company’s new directors were clashing over a cash squeeze and Wiegert’s futile attempts to search for new capital. After Wiegert returned from the Geneva Auto Show that year, the Vector board asked him to relinquish control of the company amid allegations of financial mismanagement. Wiegert refused, then changed the locks and barricaded himself inside his factory in Wilmington.

For a decade after that debacle, Wiegert focused on developing and selling Jet Ski-like water-recreation vehicles. But nobody reasonably should have expected him to stay away from the auto business forever. “Now the market is 10 to 20 times bigger than when I was doing it before,” Wiegert says.

And after ruing what he says was the sacrifice of millions of dollars in personal profits in the unraveling of his original Vector company – although expressing no similar regret about what he put his investors through -- Wiegert also is quick to note that besides his new car, he’s also promoting an opportunity for investors to ride his success.

“I have an open invitation to people to invest in this company from all walks of life, all over the world,” he says. “If they’re an auto collector or enthusiast they can buy a piece of the action. They can’t buy stock in Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche or Aston-Martin. We’ve got the only company you can invest in.”

Photo by Ed Hellwig of Edmunds' Inside Line.

Michelle Krebs:  is Editor-in-Chief of AutoObserver.com. Follow @AutoObserver on Twitter.