PANOZ: In FAST Company

Automotive Manufacturing & Production, May, 2000 by Jeff Sabatini

We hear it frequently around Detroit, the sad tale of good engineers and managers who lose their faith. People who love cars and have great pride in their work, but all the same grow weary of the bean counters, the anchor draggers, the compromises, the politics, and the overwhelming bureaucracy of the auto industry. "There's got to be a better place, a better way, for the real car guys," they think. Well there is. Welcome to Panoz--America's coolest car company.

Why is Panoz America's Coolest Car Company?

Panoz Auto Development lies in the hills of Georgia, about 50 miles northeast of Atlanta. (For those that find serendipity in numbers, that's about a mile for each of its employees.) But perhaps a better way to think of Panoz's physical location is that it's 750 miles from Detroit. (The attitudinal distance from the Motor City is even further.) The Panoz "bricks and mortar" consist of just a few industrial buildings that are more warehouse than factory.

"So why should I be impressed?" you ask. (No doubt thinking of the millions--or billions--of dollars your company generated in sales last year and the massive buildings and expensive equipment that were used to generate it.) It's simple: these guys get it. I have seen the enemy and the enemy is convention, reads a Panoz advertisement. The enemy is derivative. He is an endless repetition of apathy and mediocrity. And he better pray he never finds himself next to me at a stoplight. But this is not just advertising; it may as well be the mission statement of the company, a group of passionate, innovative car lovers who understand that product must always come first and the only thing that can be compromised is compromise itself.

The only major equipment investment is in two paint booths of the sort you'd find in a high-end body repair shop. In fact, the whole scene bears a greater resemblance to a job shop than an OEM. This is somewhat apropos, as its 10 years' of life have seen Panoz build fewer than 300 cars. The company has just four engineers and the only production vehicle it has ever built--the A.I.V. Roadster--is being discontinued this year due to government regulations. The future hangs entirely on a new model, the 2000 Esperante, of which only two currently exist: a function al show prototype and a mule that's still being tested and tweaked.

History: The A.I.V. Roadster

The Roadster dates back to the late-1980s, when Panoz owner and founder Danny Panoz purchased a Frank Costin chassis design from a bankrupt Irish company. (Costin is best known for his work with Lotus, Maserati and Lister.) Panoz began producing the Roadster in 1989 and used the Costin chassis as the foundation of the Roadster.

In the beginning, the goal was to build just one Roadster per month. However, production eventually increased to about 50 per year, all of it done by hand. The quirky-looking car also evolved from a design standpoint, being reengineered for the 1997 model year to become what Panoz claims is the first aluminum-intensive vehicle (A.I.V.) produced by a U.S. carmaker. The A.I.V. Roadster has an extruded aluminum frame that's assembled as a complete rolling chassis before it's hung with superplastic formed aluminum body panels supplied by Superform USA (Riverside, CA).

The A.I.V. Roadster is a great example of the kind of "scavenger" engineering that Panoz employs to build its vehicles. The car carries a Ford Mustang Cobra engine and transmission, a rear axle and differential from the Lincoln Mark VIII, a third brake light from the Ford Taurus, tail lights from a Land Rover, side view mirrors from the Mazda Miata, and sun visors from the BMW Z3.

"I don't see why millions of dollars have to be spent on engineering new parts and systems when there are proven pieces already available," explains Danny Panoz. "We've shown that with a little ingenuity they can be used to make something completely different." The company, therefore, focuses most of its engineering resources on suspension design and styling--things that matter most to its customers.

Present: The Esperante

The idea has been kicking around since 1994, yet this year will finally see the introduction of Panoz's $80,000 supercar. The Esperante owes much of its development to the lessons learned in the past 10 years of building the Roadster. Similarities include the superplastic-formed aluminum body panels that get attached to a rolling chassis with an extruded aluminum frame and the Mustang Cobra engine. But the new car has a level of refinement and driveability that wasn't required in the Roadster. Even more importantly, Esperante production plans call for building 200 cars this year (140 have already been sold) and up to 500 in subsequent years. This evolution of both product and production has upped the ante at Panoz, demanding a simpler design that's easier to build. "We started from the beginning and designed what can be made most economically," says John Leverett, Panoz director of engineering and R&D.

The Esperante is a showcase for the Panoz engineers' expertise at ingenious packaging. This and better parts scavenging solved the most pressing concerns of simplifying the design, especially with regards to the frame (see sidebar, "Framed"). Continuing in the tradition of carrying a lot of Ford-sourced parts, the Esperante body is largely composed of Mustang pieces, including the windshield frame and glass, the firewall and IP supports and the floor pans.