The Cars of Henrik Fisker: Bad Karma or Just Bad Luck?

Not long ago I happened upon this car while strolling around Palo Alto.  What looked at a distance like a customized Mercedes SL turned out, upon closer examination, to be...

…a Fisker Tramonto.  Never seen one?  That's probably not just because you haven't been looking. Fisker Coachbuild, the outfit formed by former Aston Martin designer Henrik Fisker, only managed to build 15 of these before giving up the idea.

The idea was to revive the time-honored art of custom coachbuilding by using modern computer-assisted design and construction techniques. Beginning in 2005, Fisker Coachbuild's Southern California workshop based their first two efforts on the big Mercedes SL chassis and on the BMW M6.  The Mercedes-based car was called the Tramonto.  There was a reason, after all, that it looked like a customized SL.  In essence, it was, but with an emphasis on the custom part.  The Tramonto retains the SL retractable metal top and glazing, but features new body panels fashioned in carbon fiber and alloy. Fisker's trademark divided grille fronts an engine bay that houses a supercharged AMG V-8 on all but one car; the final example received a 700 hp. AMG V-12.

The Tramonto also has Fisker logos replacing the familar 3-pointed star, and distinctive head and tail lights.  Perhaps not distinctive enough, however, to justify the price tag, a $108K jump over the not-inconsiderable sticker on an SL.  The Tramonto appeared in 2005, along with its sister car, the Latigo CS…

The Latigo applied the Fisker treatment to the V-10 powered BMW M6.  The Latigo CS performed on the road as one might expect an M6 with lightweight, aero bodywork to perform. Its sales performance, however, lagged behind even that of the slow-selling Tramonto.  Only two examples of the Latigo CS ever left the factory; the prototype and the car pictured above and below. Friends went to test drive it when it was for sale on the Bring a Trailer auction website, and admired it, but not enough to bid.  It sold at auction for a bit more than a third of the $300,000 original sticker price.  Not a lot for a nearly unique example of the coachbuilder's art, featuring engine performance mods not even seen on BMW's M6.  Fisker's original plan had been to limit production to 150 each for the Tramonto and Latigo; in the end, production was limited by demand, as it was for Zagato's similar effort, the Diatto Otto Vu from the same era.*

What went wrong with the original idea?  Well, shortly after the rollout of the two new Fiskers, the price of oil more than doubled, with a resulting impact on the price of gasoline. This shouldn't matter to the kind of people who can afford a six-figure car, but their attention had been attracted to cars like the Tesla Roadster, the all-electric 2 seater that entered production a year after these Fiskers faded, in 2008.  Over a four year span, Tesla would build 2,450 of the $100,000+ roadster, showing that there was a market for expensive, energy efficient cars.  Fisker decided to offer a hybrid electric vehicle to compete with the upcoming Tesla Model S all-electric sedan, first showing the Karma in 2008, and entering production in summer 2011 with a swoopy 4-door that ran a turbocharged inline GM 4 cylinder gasoline engine along with 2 electric motors and lithium-ion batteries.  The cars were built by Valmet in Finland (which had built Saab convertibles and Porsche Boxsters) and shipped to the US, but Fisker secured a Federal loan that was conditional on moving production to their US facility. The price was at or above that of the coming Tesla 'S' ($102,000-$116,000), but the car was only half as efficient as a Chevy Volt when running on batteries alone, and when the car went on sale in November 2011, some testers noted the gasoline engine's noise and lack of smoothness...

There were other troubles.  239 of the first Karmas delivered were recalled for a battery glitch that could cause fires.  Later, three cars experienced fires.  When Fisker cut back on orders for batteries because of slow sales, battery supplier A123, already paying for replacement batteries under warranty, went bankrupt.  To make matters worse, Hurricane Sandy destroyed hundreds of Karmas at the docks in Newark, New Jersey in October 2012, about $30 million worth of cars. By 2016, the Wanxiang Group, an automotive products company based in China, announced the availability of the "all new, ultra luxury" Karma Revero.  It has the same propulsion system as the Fisker Karma, and is still available at $130,000.  As for the "all new" claim, we'll leave it to the reader to decide.  The original Fisker Karma is pictured above, while the Karma Revero appears below...

*Footnote:  Zagato's Diatto Otto Vu is featured in our post for March 11, 2019 under the title
"The Etceterini Files Part 19----Zagatos Old and New: Fiats and Diattos."

Photo Credits:
Top thru 3rd:  the author
4th:    George Havelka
5th:  bringatrailer.com
6th:  wikimedia
7th:  Karma Automotive