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Posted: September 4, 2007 - 9:00 am (EST)
A new Fetish is about to hit the streets. But don't think whips and latex; think cars.
Venturi plans to deliver the first of its highly anticipated electric sports cars - named the Fetish - this month, according to CEO Gildo Pallanca Pastor.
The startup opened a new production plant specifically for the €450,000 Fetish in Monaco, where Venturi's offices are also located, he said. But production will be extremely low - only five cars per year. So don't count on getting your hands on one of these coveted cars any time soon.
"We're not claiming to be a big industrial [producer]; we're a small company growing," said Pastor, a former race-car driver. "Fetish is really a handmade car and it's slow because it's the best quality you can find, it's very expensive and it's using technologies that are the top you can find, specifically made for this car."
The Fetish will be the second electric sports car to enter production, following the Tesla Roadster, which launched last year and also immediately sold out.
But the Fetish, which goes zero to 60 in just under five seconds, actually debuted before the Roadster, at the 2004 Paris Motor Show, where it grabbed headlines as the first electric sports car intended for production.
After a history of slower, smaller electric cars, the Fetish was a fast phenomenon.
At the debut, Pastor remembered, Venturi didn't know if anyone would want to buy the Fetish. "It was a mystery," he said.
A mystery that's long over. Not only has Venturi received more than a million e-mails about the Fetish, it also already has sold the first 25 cars - that's five years' worth.
The problem has been choosing who gets the cars, Pastor said.
"It's a limited edition, and we're concerned to see which part of the world to send the cars and how we can service the people as best we can," he said. "We want to put them in the hands of the right people."
Despite the demand, Pastor says the cars aren't meant to ever reach high-volume production.
"We're taking kind of the opposite approach from Tesla [Motors]," he said. "Our idea is it's not the best for the world to have a lot of cars like this one, but to focus on smaller cars for big production. The best thing to do today with electric cars is to use them to commute every day."