Will Bollinger Motors Go the Way of DeLorean, Fisker, and Canoo?

You’d think that as long as I’ve been in this business, having witnessed countless broken hearts when an automotive start-up goes belly up, that I’d quit rooting for underdogs when logic and history suggest that failure is a natural outcome.

For every Tesla success story, for every Rivian and Lucid that are still at least in business, there’s a raft of Bricklins and Deloreans, Fiskers and Faraday Futures, Nikolas and Canoos and Qvales. Sometimes the product deserved to die, but sometimes it probably didn’t. And regardless of that, every bankruptcy and factory closing leaves a trail of tears and empty wallets.

I’m sure that if I’d been around in, say, 1947, I might have been the central cheerleader for Preston Tucker’s oddball but undeniably innovative Tucker 48, the big rear-engine sedan partially designed by styling genius Alex Tremulis. The planned powerplant was the Franklin 0-335, an air-cooled helicopter engine. That might have given me pause, but I’d still be watching with measured anticipation.

Even when I was watching the 1988 Jeff Bridges movie, “Tucker: The Man and His Dream,” I was rooting for Tucker, even though I knew how this story would turn out, and this time, the dude would not abide: Though they managed to build 50 cars, Tucker’s company would go down in flames, capped by a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission trial that exonerated Tucker and his captains, but did irreparable damage.

I mention this because nearly eight years ago, I attended a soiree at the Classic Car Club of Manhattan (“We believe in decadence through experience, ear-to-ear grins and the occasional change of underwear.”) The CCC of M had been cleared out, though they thankfully forgot to take the bar, to make room for the formal introduction of the Bollinger B1, a rustic all-electric, all-wheel-drive SUV.

The B1 was the brainchild of Robert Bollinger, an elusive, low-key, Carnegie Mellon-educated rich person; he had gone from his native Pittsburgh to New York City to work as a creative director for high-profile ad agencies, but he found the work unsatisfying, so he moved to the Catskills to raise cows. Along the way he apparently designed a line of organic beauty supplies for a company where he also served as chief operating officer. In 2016 that company was sold for $336 million, and rumor was that transaction supplied Bollinger with suitable funds for cow-raising.

But on that night in Manhattan, Bollinger admitted that what he had always wanted to do was build a car. Or, more specifically, a truck: All that cow-raising had convinced him that the American truck-buying public was not being well-served, and like so many upstart automotive company founders—actually, like all upstart auto company founders—he knew he could do better. He wasn’t big on research, he told me: “We just tried to make the best decisions we could as we went along,”

So, and this is straight from a post on his LinkedIn profile from 2022: “Seven years ago today I bought an old diesel repair shop in upstate New York. After about six months of renovation, I was ready to start Bollinger Motors. It’s here we built our first prototype with a handful of brilliant engineers.” It seems “here” was Hobart, New York, population 392, located 115 miles north of Manhattan.

The B1 we were shown in 2017 was an industrial-looking, slab-sided vehicle with exposed rivets and a lot of right angles that could go from being a four-passenger SUV to a two-passenger pickup in minutes. The company correctly described the interior as “minimalist.”

Power would come from two electric motors that would total 360 horsepower. Weight was listed at a surprisingly svelte 3900 pounds, but the B1’s gross vehicle weight rating was 10,001 pounds, making it a Class 3 medium-duty truck, conveniently eliminating the federal requirement for costly safety features such as airbags.

The Bollinger people were coy when asked who would build the B1, but dropped broad hints that it might be AM General, the Hummer company, who at the time had some extra manufacturing capacity and was actively seeking another OEM partner.

So I’m thinking: Yeah, this kind of makes sense. Two years later, Bollinger announced a price for the B1: $125,000, more than double what I was told in 2017, but still I was hopeful. Production was to start in 2020.

Except it didn’t, and likely never will. After moving its headquarters from Hobart to Detroit, the mission of Bollinger Motors abruptly changed. In 2022, “Recognizing an opportunity to have a more profound impact on the automotive industry, Bollinger Motors pivoted its focus towards building all-electric commercial trucks,” it says on the company website; the B1 SUV and the B2, a separate pickup truck, are now described as “a testament to Bollinger ingenuity, design aesthetic, and work ethic.”

A 2022 Facebook message from Robert Bollinger said he was “postponing the development” of two consumer vehicles, but this felt all too familiar. He did, at least, refund the deposits he had taken.

Enter, then, the B4, a cabover electric commercial truck platform, where the end users would presumably add their own big boxes to the bare rear frame rails. And on the way is the $158,758 Bollinger B5, which offers “increased robustness” over the B4. In 2022, most of Bollinger was bought by Mullen Automotive, which is considered a player in the electric commercial-truck market.

And then, $148 million later, this: “Lawsuit alleges Bollinger Motors is broke; production on hold,” was the headline in Automotive News on March 24. The lawsuit? Filed against Bollinger Motors by—Robert Bollinger. “Bollinger’s lawsuit alleges that Bollinger Motors is insolvent, can’t pay its bills and is being sued by at least two of its suppliers,” the story said.

Then last Thursday, another Automotive News headline: “U.S. judge puts Bollinger Motors into receivership; assets frozen after founder’s lawsuit.” Bollinger said he is through with Bollinger Motors, and apparently just wants some money. According to the story, Bollinger “said he does not want to return to the company. He has moved from the Detroit area to Pittsburgh, where he is caring for his elderly parents.”

So it would appear my batting average as a cheerleader for underdogs is pretty much a thousand: Let’s start with Vector Motors, founded by Jerry Weigert in 1978, floundering for years, and formally belly-up in 2021, after Weigert’s death. Move on to Mosler Automotive, founded in 1985 by Warren Mosler, builder of the Consulier GTP, then the Intruder and the Raptor. Mosler Automotive was gone by 2013. I loved the Rossion Q1, built on the bones of another car I liked, the Noble M400. Seen a Rossion Q1 lately? I haven’t either, not since about 2009.

This is getting painful, so let’s fast-forward to October 22, 2022, to my review of the Lordstown Endurance electric pickup truck. The headline was, “Underdog exceeds expectations.” In a third-quarter earnings call (if you can still claim it’s an “earnings call” when you’ve lost $154.8 million) a few weeks later, I was quoted by Lordstown Motors President and CEO, Edward Hightower, who said, “Steven Cole Smith from Hagerty Media commented that the Endurance is and I quote, ‘Pretty much the ideal spec for what this rig is meant to be, a fleet vehicle. The endurance is made to work and work hard.’”

By March of 2023, it was revealed that they had sold six trucks, but there had already been three NHTSA recalls.

There’s more, but you get the idea.

Actually, I’m pretty cynical about automotive start-ups: While I will cheer for an underdog, don’t try to sell me stock. When I consider a proposed vehicle, be it electric or gasoline-powered, I ask myself just one question: “Does this vehicle effectively address a market that isn’t being properly served by established automakers?”

How many times this question is answered in the affirmative? Seldom. That was the case with the Tucker back in 1947—there were plenty of good four-door passenger cars available. Exactly 75 years later, it was the case with the Lordstown Endurance—you could argue that if there’s any one market that is definitely being served, it’s full-sized pickup trucks.

(Optional second question I ask myself: “Is the CEO of this start-up too cocky for his own good?” The usual answer: Invariably.)

As for companies still on the burner: It’s hard for me to look too critically at Scout, being as how I own two, and because after I visited the under-construction plant early last year and was told in no uncertain terms that there would be no gasoline element in the all-EV Scout product portfolio, the company announced that they would indeed offer a gas-powered range extender. I was unconvinced that there were enough all-electric Scout customers to make ends meet, and I wasn’t wrong. Now, I’m hopeful that Scout will survive, maybe even thrive.

Slate? That one may have a chance, too, assuming that enough people actually want a cheap, ultra-bare-bones little electric truck that sells for, hopefully, well under $25,000, even if all the existing federal incentives aren’t in place when it goes on the market. It’ll be fascinating to follow the progress on that pickup.

Still not interested in buying stock in any automotive start-ups, though. Not yet, anyway.