Drive - Boutique Cars

Big car companies are learning that smaller is better. Some car visionaries have known that all along. By Preston Lerner / Photographs by Icon Media

I felt like a walking, talking exemplar of Murphy’s Law while putting together this column. My original plan was to spotlight an intriguing dealership in Newport Beach, but by the time I got around to calling the owner, he’d gone out of business. Plan B was to feature a brand-new shop in the Irvine Spectrum Center selling Ferrari and other high-end automotive-themed clothing and merchandise. That one closed almost before the ink was dry on the “grand opening” news release.

No. 3 on my hit parade—or maybe that should be hit list—was a custom coach builder called N2A Motors, which stands for No Two Alike, a name that aptly describes the unique vehicles it produces. But when I first spoke to owner Gene Langmesser on the phone, he told me: “We’re in the process of reorganizing. But you’re welcome to come down if you don’t mind the mess.”

Uh-oh.

We get together the next morning. At the appointed hour, I turn down a dead-end street perpendicular to Century High School in Santa Ana. I can’t find the exact address, so I pull into a space near a number that’s close and park next to what appears to be a 25-year-old Lincoln Continental customized with bizarre extensions to the nose and tail and a strange fastback rear deck. Longer than a standard Continental and sitting lower than usual on flat tires, it looks like a desperately sad motorized dachshund. A passing workman directs me to a building with no sign or address over the door, but at least it’s open.

I’m expecting a business-suit CEO type, but when Langmesser greets me he’s got “design guy” written all over him—blue jeans, loafers, stylishly spiky hair, salt-and-pepper goatee, hip rectangular glasses with bright-yellow temple pieces. He explains that the original parent company recently closed up shop, but its two subsidiaries were relaunched as stand-alone entities: One is a composites manufacturer focused on the aerospace industry; the other is N2A. “I want to build cars,” Langmesser says. “That’s what I’m here for.”

Langmesser and N2A first registered on the automotive radar a few years back with the company’s 789. The firm took the most striking elements of the ’57, ’58, and ’59 Chevrolets, melded them into a wild fiberglass body, and grafted it onto the chassis and drivetrain of a new Corvette. The result was an over-the-top traffic stopper—in a good way—offering the mechanical reliability and safety components of a late-model street car. Of course, all this pizazz comes at a price—$139,500 for the coupe, $144,500 for the convertible. But you’re not going to have any trouble finding your 789 in the parking lot.

“We customize every one of our cars,” Langmesser says. “I would never build two identical vehicles. Once a color is chosen, I take it off the market. We won’t use it again.”

To date, N2A has built and delivered 20 789s, the last two exported to more-money-than-God customers in Switzerland and Dubai. The car has been so successful that, two years ago, the company embarked on a second project. Like the 789, the Anteros is based on the mechanical blueprint of the current Corvette, but it offers bodywork that hearkens back to the front-engined Ferraris of the 1960s. During a tour of the shop, I spot three prototypes and the first production model, all of them impeccably finished and detailed. I’m genuinely impressed.

But when I ask Langmesser how sales are going, he theatrically mouths the word “slow.” Whereas the 789 is a one-of-a-kind vehicle that hits the sweet spot with hot rodders, the Anteros plays in the same stylistic and financial territory as contemporary Aston Martins and Maseratis. And N2A comes up way short on the cachet meter.

Times are tough throughout the auto industry, but the situation is particularly gruesome for the low-profile subset of vendors—such as N2A—that provides a variety of prototype services for carmakers. Orange County is home to several of these firms, the biggest and most prominent being Gaffoglio Family Metal-crafters in Fountain Valley, best-known as the supplier of dozens of show cars to Chrysler. But there are countless other companies hired on a contract basis to solve thorny problems or knock out projects on tight deadlines.

Right: N2A Convertible440 HP $144,500

 

This, in fact, is how Langmesser got his start in the car biz. A mechanical engineer by training, he’s a problem solver who specializes in creative solutions, whether designing a privacy cover for the hatchback on the Corvette (inspired by a roll-up shade in his bathroom) or a pop-up washer for the headlights on a BMW (based on lawn sprinkler technology).

With sales of the Anteros stalled, Langmesser recently unveiled renderings of a splashy new car that ought to have wider appeal: the Stinger, based on the styling cues of the beloved 1963, ’65, and ’67 Corvette Stingray. But it’s going to take at least $1 million to bring it to market, and investors aren’t lining up outside either the Santa Ana sales office or N2A’s new shop in Corona. So in the meantime, Langmesser is taking on smaller projects—from creating a glass roof for an Aston Martin to fashioning a surfboard out of carbon fiber—to keep the doors open. He’s also angling for a slice of the hybrid vehicle pie and putting together a program to create a limousine with four-wheel steering.

Obviously, boutique car companies such as N2A aren’t going to replace General Motors. But in a world that increasingly prizes individuality over conformity, I’ve got to believe there’s going to be a place for niche manufacturers. I’m betting that creativity and flexibility will allow small, streamlined companies to thrive while bigger, more bureaucratic ones stumble. Langmesser likes to tell customers that “your only limitation is your imagination and your pocketbook.” Of course, he could say the same thing about his own company.

Right: N2A Anteros Hardtop 440 HP $149,500

These days, conventional wisdom isn’t faring too well in the automobile marketplace, as I discovered all too clearly when I started working on this column. But renegades like N2A ought to be able to keep their heads above water, even when so many other businesses look like they’re sinking.

Preston Lerner is an Orange Coast contributing editor.