Re: "Pininfarina" Spiders

[CARIBOULH@domain.elided]

John Hertzman was correct when he remembered that there was a "third party" 
involved regarding the distribution of Pininfarina vehicles in the US. That 
person was non other than everyon'es friend in the auto business, Malcom 
Bricklin (and later he was responsible for the original importation of Yugos 
also!).

Bertone with the X1/9 went thru the exact same procedure as Pininfarina did 
at the time: Fiat no longer wanted to sell cars in the US, so they too took 
the entire production of the X1/9 in house. Bertone and Pininfarina marketed 
the cars throughout the entire world except for North American, where 
Bricklin formed a company in Arizona called International Automotive 
Importers or IAI to distribute both of the cars. It was a real "sweetheart" 
deal for him since he didn't need to worry about supplying parts as Fiat Auto 
USA was still in existence and did that function, nor did he actually "touch" 
the imported cars since he then assigned regional "importers" to act in that 
function who actually received the vehicles and sent them off to the dealers.

This is one of the reasons that the entire plan did not work, since Bricklin 
got "his cut", the regional importer got "their cut", and then finally the 
dealer got "their cut" making the final sticker price of both vehicles 
shockingly higher than just a year or two before when Fiat imported them. If 
memory serves me right, in 1984 and 1985 a Pininfarina Spider cost more than 
an Alfa Spider and the X1/9 was just ridicously expensive for "how much" car 
it was!

Bricklin was not involved in promoting the continued production of the cars, 
nor did his company "invest" or "contract" at all for their assembly. In 
retrospect it just seemed like a way to skim a few bucks off the top while 
everyone else did the work!

Ed at Caribou
www.caribou.cc

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