He retreated first to his desert ranch in Scottsdale, Ariz., and then to his 5,000-acre hideout in the Colorado Rockies, complete with an indoor shooting range, a riverfront swimming pool, a helipad, and a pet camel. There, Bricklin explored new options such as launching a business that would refurbish used cars, building an air car that would float six inches off the ground, and introducing a new and improved Bricklin SV-2. But it was another 10 years before he made headlines again, this time with the help of a Yugoslavian automaker. The Yugo, a hatchback universally panned for its lack of reliability, had only one strong selling point: a price tag of $3,000. Bricklin sold 35,959 Yugos in the first year and then the war in Yugoslavia interfered. He walked away from the venture after Mabon Nugent, a Wall Street investment firm, agreed to give him $20 million for it. This time it was Bricklin who would claim to have been fleeced. Mabon Nugent filed for protection from creditors under the Chapter 11 bankruptcy laws and never made the full payment. Simultaneously, John and Rebecca Bednarik of Accokeek, Md., won a $17.3 million judgment against Bricklin for failing to deliver Yugos to their dealership. Bricklin blames his attorney, who was disbarred during the case, for that one.
Despite his personal financial woes, Bricklin repeatedly attempted to launch the next big thing, such as a 1,000-shop national car dealership that went belly-up when his potential financier, Michael Milken, went to jail in 1998. By early 2002, Bricklin was balding and grayer but no less ready to go for it once again. He hired Ron Harbour, a renowned automotive industry expert and publisher of The Harbour Report, to begin scouring potential factory sites in developing nations like Poland, Romania, and India. The Yugoslavian government offered to donate an old Yugo factory to Bricklin free of charge. But there was a small catch: The factory had been bombed by NATO warplanes five times. Bricklin passed.
It wasn't until a chance encounter with a casual acquaintance in April 2004 that China came up. The man, a Russian who exported cars to South America, offered to set Bricklin up with a company called Chery, about which the Russian had heard great things. "I thought I was going to find some factory in the middle of a rice paddy," Bricklin recalls. Instead, when he arrived in Wuhu, he thought he had landed in heaven. Not only did he find a modern facility staffed by a motivated work force, he also found a man he now describes as his entrepreneurial soul mate. It was Yin, Chery's 42-year-old president. Yin had spent the bulk of his career in the car business with companies like Volkswagen before being picked to head Chery in 1997. Bricklin says the two of them hit it off right from the start. Yin told Bricklin he planned to turn his 8,000-employee company into a Chinese Toyota. "His dreams are even bigger than mine," says Bricklin. "And that really turns me on."
Bricklin began to see the fragments of his up-and-down career fitting together in a new way and producing something better than he had ever accomplished in the past. "For the first time in my life, after 40 years of working in this business, I know how to do everything I need to do to make this work," he says.
Even before Bricklin announced the Chery deal to the world this January at the Detroit auto show, he was working behind the scenes to ensure his story made as big a splash as possible. He was also conducting damage control because The Detroit News already had the scoop on the deal and was going to break the story before he made his announcement at the show. So Bricklin tracked down Keith Crain, publisher of Automotive News, the industry's leading trade magazine, to clue him in as well. At the time, Crain was lying in a hospital bed in White Plains, N.Y., recuperating from double knee replacement surgery. Throwing open the doors to Crain's room with Jonathan and his camera in tow, Bricklin walked in with a proclamation: "I'm back." "Nothing Malcolm does surprises me," says Crain. "He's like one of those toy clowns that when you punch it, it bounces right back up."
After the hardware stores, the scooters, the Subarus, the Bricklins, the Yugos, the used-car dealerships, and the electric bikes, Bricklin is pitching what he says will be his final endeavor. He forecasts that within five years, Americans will be buying one million Chinese-made cars from his dealers. The Chery product will be sheathed in Lexus-caliber luxury but will be priced 30% lower than its Japanese counterparts and carry a 10-year, 100,000-mile warranty. "We are going to produce better, prettier, and smarter cars for less money," says Bricklin. "We're not trying to see how cheap we can do it, we're trying to see how good we can get it."
Bricklin also wants to change the car-buying experience itself, taking what GM's Saturn division has accomplished and pushing the model even further. Bricklin is having Chery's 250 "Auto Shows," as he calls the dealerships he intends to build, designed to generate an experience. He envisions a multistory, glassed-in show room with over 22,000 square feet of display space, an outdoor movie screen stretching 100 feet, half-mile oval test tracks, fast-food vendors, and supervised daycare.
