Recent Tour of New Panoz Facility

[2006GTLM]

My wife and I toured the new Panoz facility last week. John Leverett gave us a wonderful tour and insights into what the new company plans to do. It would be inappropriate for me to detail those plans here before they roll them out. They have an interesting new business model that I hope works out well for them. In many ways, they are starting a new business, so we should all be patient and watch it roll out.

A few things that I don't think are confidential that John would not mind me mentioning include the following:

Don Panoz is leading this resurgence, not Dan.
All cars will be updated with new ergonomics, new features and new engines.
All cars will be built to order with the personal choices of the specific customer.
The sales model will not be the old disinterested dealer network, but a new concept that John is still building.
The cars in the museum are a fabulous history of Panoz, and I encourage you all the visit and see them once they actually open the facility.
The Abruzzi may still come to fruition down the road. Don is still passionate about the car and concept (both the road car and the race car are in the museum).

We got to see some develop activities on the updated features for both the Roadster and Esperante. They are crash testing the GTR1 road version soon so that they can market it as well. All this takes a lot of time, so be patient, this is a small company, not GM with billions of dollars and unlimited staff. The Panoz team seems to working on a lot of things at once to make this work out.

Have faith, I think this could be fun for all of us in future years.
Ken O

[ishigakisensei]

Good news to read about. My 2¢ - I would hope that the new cars do not have a center mounted gauge cluster because that is the biggest detriment to the Esperante interior. Don may be passionate about the Abruzzi but the public never was. It is not an aesthetic that would endear the company to mass audiences.

[99panoz]

I would love to know what the price point of these cars will be, at least the cars that had had previous road going versions (Roadster / Espernate) before the new & improved models. Even more interesting will be how they successfully market a car that in 1999 had an MSRP of $62,500.00 and sat around on dealers lots for years after their production dates. In 2013' dollars this same car would now cost $87,900.00 (according the the inflation calculator on the US Bureau of Labor Statistics website) and this would be with no "modern" improvement costs and assumes that they (Panoz) are still content with the same percentage of markup that they used over 14 years ago (which btw, generated them no profits then either).

I'm the second owner of my car and when I purchased it several years ago, I sent it back to the factory to have it refurbished to as new of condition as much as it possibly could be. I then made a few improvements over the factory issue specs myself and today have an as new of car as one could hope to have. Still only has less that 1,400 miles on it, garage kept and in truly mint condition. But based on current market climate and recent sales history, I have my doubts that I could sell it for much more than $50,000.00 and as I say, it is damn near a new car in every sense of the word.
So why would someone be willing to go to Panoz and purchase one of their new "rebirths" for $87,900 (plus another $6K in sales tax plus tag and title) when I would struggle to get $50K out of my like new mint conditioned car?

Also, will these cars be titled as 2014 models? If so then good times are abound as the new owners can also expect to pay a much higher Ad Valorem tax and insurance rates going forward for several more years as to where my 1999' version has pretty much settled at the bottom of the basis scale due to its depreciated age.
Not saying this won't work........just thinking that if this "marketing plan" was being pitched for a small business loan down at the local bank, I'd have to think the loan officer in charge would surely be left scratching his head and saying.... "uh, can you run that by me one more time?".

[2006GTLM]

My opinion of what they plan to do is market the cars directly to wealthy people that want something no one else has. They want to sell 100 cars a year, not 30,000 Porsches or even 1600 Lamborghinis. I don't know if they will be successful, but they will not be targeting people that need a bank loan. I suspect a new Roadster will be priced well above $100K, not the inflation adjusted old model price. They will not be made for dealer lots, but rather personalized for the ordering individual.

The old dealer network way of selling Panoz cars is what failed. John mentioned a story to me that a salesman at one of his dealers tried to convince John that Panoz were made of fiberglass. The last Chicago area dealer was a Corvette broker that had access to Panoz cars, but did little marketing and certainly had no inroads into the world of the rich and famous around Chicago. The dealership was in a suburban area that wealthy people would not typically travel to.

While I live in the Chicago area, I bought my Esperante from a Panoz dealer in Fresno, CA. It was the only Panoz he ever sold before going out of business. He too was general used car broker that tried a dealership, but was never deeply involved with the brand. I don't think that John will target Fresno in this new approach.

Rather than spending a ton of money on a dealer network, I suspect that they will spend that money on finding 100 specific wealthy individuals each year that want something that their neighbors don't have. There is more that John mentioned to me on how they plan to do this that I think would be wrong for me to put out in the forum until John rolls it out.

Again, like politics, I can be skeptical, but in this case, with the equity in the Panoz name and connections with wealthy car people that Don built through racing, I think that this new selling model has some potential.

PS - the central dash board will be softened in the new interior updates (which are vast from what I saw). I personally like it, and keep in mind that BMW has sold millions of new MINI's, all with a central dash pod.

[PanozGTLM]

2006GTLM,
Thank you for the factory update! I think the most successful Panoz dealer was Hovey in Texas, all the others fell way short of their expectations. On another subject please tell us about your latest acquisition the F-type! I drove in at a Jaguar event and really enjoyed it.

Howard

[2006GTLM]

Howard,
My wife bought the F-Type. We took our Audi in for an oil change, and planned to walk across the street to have lunch. Barb never got past the showroom as they had her red car on the floor. She wanted it, she bought it. Her car is a base engine car, but with the upgraded sports seats also in red. For how we use the cars (gran touring mostly), the 340 HP in sport mode is all the power we would ever need. The $10K upcharge for the 380 HP or $22K for the V8 did not seem logical for us, and Barb really wanted that red one. The base engine car is very quick. I would crash the V8 version in traffic. So far so good on the quality side with only a couple of small issues.

The only small negative is that the trunk is so small that we leave the optional space saver at home so that we can fit two medium duffle bags for weekenders. There is no storage at all in the passenger area.

The upgrade sport seats are the best car seats I have ever had. I strongly recommend them if you are interested in an F-Type. I would also spec them out in a new Panoz LLC Esperante GTLM if anyone wants to talk to John about building a car.

[99PanozAIV]

Roadster

Interesting comments about the roadster and I have wondered the same. I would think that these would be expensive automobiles to build, just because of increased costs and the ever-decreasing value of the US dollar. So it seems that the first thing we'd see, if the marketing is successful and drives any demand, is perhaps an increase in the selling price of the better used roadsters out there now.

I have to admit though, an AIV with no further weight increase and a Coyote engine would be something to experience.

[dogdoc97]

I may have mentioned this....

John shared with me when I was up there in October that these cars would more likely be in the $150K range plus or minus with about 650 HP....too much for me BUT I hope they sell all they can. Sounds like the plan(according to the article cited below) is to build them AS THEY ARE ORDERED and not before.....


BTW, autoweek/automobile cannot recall has an article last week on PANOZ and the new cars to be built........dogdoc

[PanozGTLM]

John shared with me when I was up there in October that these cars would more likely be in the $150K range plus or minus with about 650 HP....too much for me BUT I hope they sell all they can. Sounds like the plan(according to the article cited below) is to build them AS THEY ARE ORDERED and not before.....


BTW, autoweek/automobile cannot recall has an article last week on PANOZ and the new cars to be built........dogdoc

http://www.autoweek.com/article/20131016/alms/131019825

[TylerJWyly]

The museum is available for local functions, with all proceeds from the facility rental to be donated to the Chestnut Mountain Ranch and Eagle Ranch for boys, and the Braselton library

If they're trying to start renting out their museum and showroom as event space, wouldn't a good promotional start be....ohh I don't know....an OPEN HOUSE and maybe CAR SHOW???

-Tyler