The BRICKLIN Story

[Music] when he was born he has a double crown and the doctor told me her genus here I named him after my grandfather who lived to be 93 years old cars really wasn't his Forte he likes business he used to say I'll Be A Millionaire at 25 and it really came about when I was a little kid the thing I rulle the cowboy [Music] [Music] [Music] the [Music] [Music] well it wasn't that dramatic I mean it wasn't it wasn't something you know I woke up one night and said oh my God I must build a car I was destined to do that and it really wasn't a long Boyhood dream I mean I've always liked beautiful cars and I've always like to own beautiful cars and in many cases I've been fortunate and been able to own some what I call beautiful cars but they've always dissatisfied me and yet although the American Auto industry has always knocked for not being Progressive enough when you get into a sh or Ford or Chrysler or an American Motors product you can usually depend when you turn the key it's going to start it just seemed to me they've missed one thing that people really want and that's some beauty on the outside when they did come out with a beautiful car of any limited production it was eaten up the Corvette has shown consistently that they sell everything they can build although they chose not to build tremendous quantities uh the datson came out with a magnificent car in the 240 in that it was a pretty car at a reasonable price and they sold all they could build which was even considerably more than the ET yet nobody took it to mean that they could combine all these features and still sell even more if they wanted to and maybe because they didn't want to it makes no difference to me but I saw the hole in that market and I said hey if we could add all those things and add safety which seems to be in congruous with beauty then maybe we'll take a step forward not necessarily for the good of the world but for a very profitable Venture which in the same turn would be good for future generations and changes in automobile industry a lot of people told me I was crazy and the use of anac yeah a few people told me I was full of uh I thought less of them when they did uh I think more of them now because they were more right than wrong at the time I just didn't realize it thank [Music] God first thing we did and of course you have to understand we were very naive at the time and we just assumed you build one car and then of course you ready to manufacture so we came up with a basic design that we later put into our first car which we call the gray experimental car which we thought was going to be representative of what we're going to build Malcolm had the faculty of dreaming and working very hard to make that dream come true many of us including myself we dream of things that we would like to do and we watch the boats go down the river things of that nature we don't do anything about it we are armchair dreamers he is one of those people that dream and go about trying to make it happen I assume that when I want to do something I'm laying on my deathbed and based on that fact what is it that I would have done to make me satisfied to lay there and if I haven't done that then I want to do it now in my second year of college I decided that what I wanted to do is join the life stream and somehow I just didn't feel going to school allowed you to join the live stream he felt that his father could teach him more about business than the professors and he was business oriented I objected but rather than let him go two years and wasting his time there he immediately got involved in business and so fortunately as we can see it came out all right we went out we started hiring some people from The Big Three who really knew what they were doing and they informed us that although it was an interesting design exercise it had no validity in the real world of automobile business which was not only disappointing but at first we wouldn't even believe what they had to say and then they started explaining to us we have to start all over with Clays but this time they have to be accurate to two 10,000 of an inch yes sir [Applause] [Music] ad Yos [Music] hat I'm old enough to remember serials in the movie and it always seems there was a cliffhanger somebody was hanging by a thread but that really wasn't the end because when you came to the movie the next week they saved him we were lucky enough to hire a man by the name of herb grass who was professional and knew how to take the car that we had built and keep the same feel but add the necessary touches to make it manufacturable automobile Malcolm and I hit it off super right in the beginning he's a freeth thinker and so am I his ideas are uh 2001 all the way and he came to me with an idea develop a safety sports car this is a [Music] challenge Detroit is used to the the boxy uh type of vehicle uh you take your your large Luxury Auto automobiles they're almost an answer to low class housing and this was a designer's dream hydraulic door with a jack screw at the aost which would put us at the center of the load and run by cable to a motor which would be buried in the Bost we were looking for the best people around we were also looking for the most open-minded people you have to have a power force wait a second stop do we agree that if you move this down this way you can have all the pressure you want we weren't looking for people who just could come to us and say this is the way it's always been done this is the way you must do it we were very fortunate most of the people we hired and most of the people who have stuck with us are those kind of people not you say it seems to make sense you're saying that it's going to be more difficult than he says that's right fine it's going to be one or the other or someplace in between but rather than theorize anymore CU some of our very good ideas weren't good and some of our very bad ideas were great why don't we just go ahead always thinks when something is successful he never thinks if when I first met Mal I was getting over Another Love and um I had two other dates before I met him and I went on those two dates and that was the last time I dated anybody I was all of 17 I thought he wasn't the best looking guy going he had big horn Rim glasses and a crew cut and he was tall and very very skinny but he was really nice and he had a lot of personality we just sort of I guess hit it [Music] off I always knew that man would be successful how successful I didn't know and what's more I really didn't [Music] care when he was about 19 or 20 he used to say I'll Be A Millionaire at 25 and of course we only took it as a a joke or but it really came about as he grew up into the ripe age of around 21 he had an idea of starting a hardware chain of Handyman stores I took advantage of something that had been a phenomenon at the time which was 7-Eleven grocery stores which was open 7-Eleven 7 days a week and I found that that also worked for building and building supplies I thought being a millionaire was a very important goal and so I set my goal at that and then I became a millionaire and I realized that it wasn't quite as important or quite as magnificent as I thought at the time and then I cease setting goals at least goals that I could reach because if you set goals that you reach the worst that can happen is you reach them and then what do you do from your Encore from that time on anything he'd say I feel it'll come about if I knew that it would take 20 to $25 million to get to where I am today I would not have started because I cannot raise 20 or $25 million I don't know of any banks or governments or provinces or friends that'll give me that kind of money again I assumed it was going to cost a maximum of $3 million and I was prepared at that time to put up sufficient of my money and I felt convinced that I could raise the difference if necessary to come up with that kind of money when the figures start getting to five or6 million I start getting a little nervous because now we are starting to run close to where I couldn't come up with it and there again I felt well if that's all it really is I can come up with that too when the figure started running at 10 or 12 million I started getting worried cuz I didn't know where I was going to get it and I tell you the truth between now between then and now I don't really know what happened but somehow it Rose to 20 or $25 million Malcolm has always had vivid imagination and he fortunately has the art of communication if he has an idea he can sell it to someone there's no magic you just say I'm going to knock on every door I'm going to talk to every person that I possibly can no matter how stupid it may be until something happens and if you plant enough seeds it seems like enough corn starts to grow there are two specific gentlemen that have the kind of imagination along with gutfield that I just happened to be lucky enough to find first one was John Bunning who is chairman of the board of first Pennsylvania company which is a very conservative very large Bank he felt that this car could happen and he was willing to put the bank's money where his mouth was based on the fact that we could reach certain goals to couple that we had to come up with sufficient Capital to build a factory not just the engineering and there again we were lucky enough to meet a man like Premier Hatfield from New Brunswick I thought you know this man is for real and this is exciting and this is something that uh this proposal will work and and this is a response to a high demand if you were going to give me the scenario to begin with I would tell you that's impossible that's out of a book someplace but the facts are we found those two people and without those two people there would be no car what the root of it uh it's it's Faith personal faith in the in in what you're doing and you know he has it in abundance he has it to give away we were asked when we were first given our loan when we thought we would be in production we gave our best estimates which were horrendous you do have to understand that they've said it can't be done and we have to admit it has been difficult and since we have never built a car it became very difficult to estimate and because of those wrong estimations it gave valid grounds for questioning the validity of the total project fortunately we had very very strong backing of Confidence from The Province the most important thing is to make a gut determination and that's the only way you can make it you know is this man who who says he wants to come to your Province uh and wants to invest and and has this proposal and is he a con artist or is he really an entrepreneur uh I made the decision that uh that Malcolm bricklyn was a was an entrepreneur the words con and the words ripoff are too gbly applied and my interpretation is simply when you get involved in something and you win no matter what happens to the project then you're ripping off something since I was willing to put up everything I owned into the operation unless it was successful there's no way that I could even come back to Ground Zero after he had sold out his interest in The Handyman stores he was able to sell fuchi heavy Industries on bringing a automobile into the United States and giving him an exclusive contract to sell that automobile because he was able to sell himself to the Japanese people my distribution for Subaru automobiles provided me with sufficient capital and expertise to get myself involved in this [Music] [Applause] [Music] good opportunity to get in on a brand new concept of cars a car that nobody's manufactured before nobody has ever attempted to make an a curake green forced fiberglass car it's like anything else that's new it's going to be hard to build they don't just they don't just fall together none of these guys have never worked in an assembly plant before and everybody says uh he wears love beads and he wears blue jeans you know he's got a lot more on the ball than a lot of people give him credit for he's a hell of a promoter malcol is the sort of guy You' got to run very fast to keep up with he goes at about 1,000 mph and he thinks at the same speed we should be able to put more quality into that car than any other car that's ever been built we have an advantage over people like Rolls-Royce who do not use tremendous amount of Machinery but use a tremendous amount of hand labor and we have an advantage over Detroit that uses a tremendous amount of machinery and the Hand labor has to work too fast give us the big three are really in favor of what I'm doing there's a lot of conversation in the United States that the best good for the country would be breaking them up because my My Success is the the best indication that competition can exist and innovative ideas uh can come forth I really truly believe that they're enthusiastically interested in my success thank you thank you very much [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] this is from it looks like a child Dear Mr brickland thank you for sending me the poster and letter you are probably one of the only persons now connected with a big company who is nice enough to answer a kid since the last's letter I wrote I have gotten three magazines just because they have something about the bricklyn P.S your poster of the bricklyn is the only thing my mom ever let me hang directly on the wallpaper in my [Laughter] room I remember when I was a little kid the thing I'd rather be I wanted to be a policeman and I wanted to be a fireman but I think I think the thing I really wanted to be was a cowboy all we just experiences basically all of us are kids the question is do we feel foolish or not I guess I did feel foolish when I lived in Philadelphia when you live in Arizona you don't feel foolish it's if you'd wear a suit in New York and you'd wear a turban in IND you're allowed to go around wearing dungar and cowboy hats in Arizona I think I enjoy children more than adults or better than that I think I like adults that are willing to act like children I've reached that age where I'm willing to act like a child and still be cidate as an adult [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] people are very concerned about doing their Duty whether it be 20 years of work whatever it is till retirement and then they're going to live if I go to sleep looking at my watch hoping that there's long hours between now and the time I wake up I know that tomorrow is not going to be too exciting and I therefore better change whatever is tomorrow is going to [Music] be the real question you have to ask is if are you willing to exist or are you willing to be special and special is not what somebody else thinks of you but it's what you think of yourself we didn't just build a car we built a magnificent car that will be acclaimed around the world that we'll all be proud of and me especially to be proud to have my name on the back of that car thank you and thank you very much Malcolm come on let's go for a drive it involves a certain amount of Basics that I believe are going to be in the cars of the future and that the future is going to be that much closer today than it would have been if we weren't around starting next to your skin the use of acrylics I think are going to be accelerated by 5 or 10 years by the major manufacturers in the world because what it does is allows that body to look just as beautiful 20 years from today unlike steel bodies there is not any Chrome except for the name which is ironic now always has like little Gadget type things uh our bed has stereo in it and lights and uh I think the the doors reflect MOS the doors are a very important factor of our car it shows that people are interested in sex appeal and that sex appeal can also have a value those doors are a very expensive thing to put into operation but they're also something that's very safe because it gives you tremendous opening to get in and get out and also opens into traffic a lot less underneath the body we've devised some very basics in in framework and in absorption and in rollover factors that are going to be used not 100% but are going to be used as models for what should be as far as safety when we had the Prototype and I saw this fantastic car coming at me and then when I got closer I real realized it was the brickland and God it really looked good [Music] [Music] oh [Music] a [Music] have I had failures constantly but I think failure is really when you lay down to die if you haven't done most of the things you wanted to do then you're a failure but if you assume that when you went to the bank today and you didn't get your money you're a failure or if you didn't sell enough whatever it is you wanted to sell today you're a failure then you're going to be a very unhappy person but the reason you're going to be unhappy is because you're equating failures the wrong way to me the end of the book is the end of the book and that means you were born and you're dead and that's the book the chapters in between are just [Music] chapters and I hope the end of the book isn't here yet [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music]