Man’s man and automotive magnate Bob Lutz was just in Detroit last week for the 2014 Detroit Auto Show. There, his company VL Automotive officially unveiled its first model, the Destino.
If the Destino looks familiar, that’s because it should. It’s a Fisker Karma that’s had the hybrid bits yanked out and replaced with a 6.2-liter Corvette V8 engine making 636 horsepower. Together with an automatic transmission, the Destino will happily outrun its previous Karma iteration to 60 mph and then hit a top speed of 135 thanks to the 1,100-pound weight savings.
At the unveil, Lutz had an interesting revelation during a quickie interview with Detroit News. When asked if the Destino-style conversion will be available for Tesla Model S owners, Lutz simply said, “yes.”
Without clarifying or elaborating, Lutz has caused a bit of a stir – a kerfuffle, if you will – in the automotive community.
Only a lunatic would dare convert perhaps the most famous EV on the planet into a gasoline burning super sedan.
After all, such a move would unleash a veritable firestorm of criticism and condemnation from not only Tesla fans but also from probable Bond villain and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
The more I ponder this, though, the more I realize there aren’t two men I’d rather see go mano-a-mano than Lutz and Musk.
So will VL really begin ravaging Teslas? We’ll have to wait and see.
In the meantime, if you’d like to get a VL Destino, it’ll run you $200,000. If you already have one of the 1,800 Fisker Karmas in existence, though, VL will V8itfy it for a bit less.
