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Upstart Green Luxury Automaker’s Pointman: Doolan

Irvine’s Fisker Automotive Inc. is backed by a top-notch designer from BMW AG and Aston Martin and has a buzz surrounding its sexy, environmentally friendly luxury cars.

But the upstart automaker’s greatest asset just might be Victor Doolan’s Rolodex.

“I know most of the retailers in America from my experience with other car companies,” said Doolan, who held senior posts with Ford Motor Corp.’s Premier Automotive Group in Irvine and was president of BMW’s North American unit.

Doolan retired as North American head of Ford’s Volvo in 2005. Two years later, he came out of semiretirement to join four-year-old Fisker, where he’s director of retail development and a board member.

Fisker is developing an upscale sedan, the Karma, and a sports car, the Sunset, which run off a combination electric and rechargeable battery engine developed with Irvine-based Quantum Fuel Systems Technologies Worldwide Inc.

The cars are due out next year and are set to sell for $87,500 to $120,000.

A call from Henrik Fisker, Fisker’s founder, chief executive and one of the lead designers on the BMW Z8, brought Doolan out of retirement.

Doolan knew Fisker from Premier Automotive Group, where Fisker designed for Aston Martin when it was part of Ford.

Doolan’s challenge: recruiting dealers.

The automaker is looking to set up a global network of 40 dealers to sell its cars.

Doolan hopes to have them in place by March. Fisker has about 30 dealers signed up so far.

Fisker is trying to recruit dealers during the worst downturn in auto sales in recent memory, including for luxury vehicles.

“The obvious concerns are when and how,” Doolan said. “The retailers we’re dealing with have weathered through other downturns before. Most tell me (the industry) will have turned around by the end of the next year.”

The automaker is pitching its cars as a relatively low-risk proposition for dealers. It’s looking for existing dealers to carve out a small amount of space,about 800 to 1,000 square feet,to sell the cars.

Fisker is looking at major U.S. markets, including Southern California, Chicago and New York. Doolan wouldn’t say if the company has lined up an Orange County dealer.


For more on this story, see the Feb. 9 edition of the Business Journal.

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