History
The Fisker Latigo and Tramonto were intended to bring back the lost art of custom coachbuilding. The intent was to allow high-end luxury customers to get the greatest exclusivity by both limiting production and by offering many customizable options. There may have been many reasons for slow sales in 2006-2007, but one reason was clear: steadily rising oil prices that were under $30 a barrel in 2004 but were headed toward $80 per barrel and higher in 2007. According to Henrik Fisker, many high-end customers were now expressing that their desire for luxury and performance was now accompanied by a desire for greater efficiency and for a "green" image. It was this realization, and a fateful meeting with Alan Niedzwieki of Quantum Fuel Systems, that led Henrik Fisker and Barnard Koehler to start a JV called Fisker Automotive, whereby Fisker Coachbuild would provide design and Quantum would provide the Hybrid-EV technology to create a new range-extended Electric Vehicle, which would ultimately be named the Karma. Fisker Coachbuild continues to provide design services for automotive and other applications. As Fisker Coachbuild turned its attention to the new EV market, the company stopped further marketing of the Latigo. The only two Latigos ever built were car #000, the prototype based on the BMW 645i, and the only customer car ever delivered: car #001 based on a BMW M6, discussed further below.
Read more about this topic: Fisker Latigo CS
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I am not a literary man.... I am a man of science, and I am interested in that branch of Anthropology which deals with the history of human speech.”
—J.A.H. (James Augustus Henry)