Vector M12

Vector occupies a strange place between truth and fiction.

It’s a car company so enigmatic that in comparison, General Motors looks open source. Because it's so difficult to separate fact and fiction about the cars themselves from the company's narrative, I'll try to weave both together to remind you of this Vector’s tale.

“…but then the whole thing was cooked by a man who learned everything there is to know about quality control in a Bulgarian power station…” — Jeremy Clarkson reviewing the Vector M12 for Top Gear

On paper, the ingredients were impressive to 11-year-old me: a rebodied, stretched Lamborghini Diablo chassis (largely developed while the Italian maker was owned by Chrysler), complete with a Lamborghini V12 engine, advanced carbon-reinforced fiberglass bodywork, and the refined touch of ex-Lotus engineers who were tasked with handling.

At the time, I thought its wings, flares, and louvers seemed to be in all the right places, an automotive Yasmine Bleeth running in slow motion on Baywatch’s golden sand.

A Vector, why? Back in 1995, other supercars weren't all that super.

Diablo, slab-sided; Ferrari F50, the car that ate the F40; Porsche’s fastest car was something turbo with its engine in the back. A McLaren F1 sat atop the food chain, absolutely, but it has always been the most rational take on a supercar and as such never looked all that great on bedroom wall posters: where's the rear wing?

I know know that the world itself was going through lots of change. Buzzwords: investment banks, stock portfolios, globalization, multinational corporations — and the car phones, fax machines, Windows '95, superyachts, and supercars to fuel a continued desire to accumulate wealth — the world’s rich were starting to get a leg up and began to express themselves in supercars. 

And then, for a time, both Lamborghini and Vector found themselves under the same Indonesian owners.

Megatech was formed by Tommy Suharto, a son of the former Indonesian president. I can give you an idea of his character by saying that he's been connected to illegal land grabs, fraud, coercion, 'fleeing justice', and convicted of ordering an assassination — and who seems to have spent most of his adult life in court as a defendant.

I don't want to say much more.

Because after the in-flight magazine of Indonesia’s national airline, Garuda Indonesia Airways, published an article entitled, “A new destination to enjoy in Bali,” which mentioned in a footnote that he was a convicted murderer, he sued the magazine for defamation and won approximately $1.46 million in damages. (True story.)

For the sake of this story, he's from a powerful family, and he likes fast cars.

In 1993, Megatech had completed a hostile takeover of Vector, kicking founder Jerry Wiegert to the curb in the process. 

Chrysler sold Lamborghini to one of Megatech's investors, Mycom Setdco, in 1994, and all of a sudden Vector had moved into a Lamborghini-owned building in Florida…and the two were passing notes.

That the resulting supercar was just a Lambo-fied version of the earlier Chevrolet V8-powered Avtech WX-3 and Avtech WX-3R prototypes didn't help sales, nor did the common misconception that, like the DeTomaso Pantera, the M12 was simply an American car with an Italian heart.

It was an American car with an Italian heart, but for early reviewers of the M12, this felt like the worst possible versions of each. American build quality, Italian reliability, and looks from a trench somewhere in the Mid-Atlantic.

The car's performance was strong, if optimistic: thanks to its 5.7-litre Lamborghini V12 and a 5-speed gearbox identical to the one fitted to the Ford GT40, it could do 0-100 km/h (0-62 mph) in 4.6 seconds and had a top speed of 304 km/h (189 mph).

To drum up interest in the car, they even modified one for racing — but I think you wouldn't be surprised if I told you that the M12 ASR was both completely hopeless on-track and unreliable. 

Around these parts, that’s enough to earn sainthood.