KEY LARGO — There’s a story Robert Perez likes to tell, and it goes over well with the audience. This audience in particular.
In the early 1970s, he says, he was the manager of a big Pontiac dealership in Atlanta. One day this man drove up in a little underpowered foreign car. The car was a Honda. The man was a Honda employee. He was signing up dealers to take on the fledgling brand.
Perez looked over the car and listened to the man’s story. He was impressed enough to go inside the dealership and find his boss. “There’s a guy out here with a Honda car, and he’s trying to sign up dealers to sell them,” Perez told his boss. “I think you might want to talk to him.”
“Not interested,” the boss said. “Send him away.”
“So I go out and tell the guy I’m sorry,” Perez says. “I say, ‘See that dealership across the street? Go talk to them. They have more vision.’ “
That dealership with vision is now a very large and successful Honda dealer, Perez says. And the Pontiac store he used to work for? Gone.
Cuban-born Perez, 58, is speaking to the dealer body for the Cross Lander, a Romanian SUV that Perez has been trying to import to the United States and sell since 1990, when he opened a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Romania and was impressed with the near-bulletproof sport utes he saw there made by a company called Aro.
These 148 dealers — some already proprietors of major new-car stores, others the owners of small used-car lots who would love to have a brand-new model to sell — have been waiting, and suffering, along with Miami’s Perez as he has overcome one obstacle after another to bring the Cross Lander to America.
Such as? A seemingly endless, and still ongoing, certification with various federal agencies. An International-built diesel engine originally planned to power the Cross Lander couldn’t meet pollution requirements, so a new engine had to be found. The result? A 4.0-liter V-6, the engine that powers the Ford Explorer.
Before that, the original company that was trying to import the Cross Lander folded, leaving investors, including Perez, holding the bag for $17 million. Then another group claimed to have the “exclusive” right to import the Cross Lander, and a battle ensued between it and the remnants of the first group, which Perez took over.
Plus there were problems in Romania. In July 2003, 50 employees of the factory went on a hunger strike, saying the factory was four months behind on salaries. Controlling interest in the plant had just been put up for sale — for the fifth time in two years. For a while, Perez and his associates figured they would build the Cross Lander in Brazil, instead of Romania. That didn’t work out, either.
Eventually, Perez and Cross Lander bought the plant, in tiny Campulung, Romania, in the Transylvanian Alps 60 miles north of Bucharest. Some published reports say Perez paid $150,000 for the plant, which employs 1,100 workers. Other reports say the price was $27 million. Both are probably correct: The difference is in the amount of investment Cross Lander has pledged to make in the 8.5-million-square-foot facility
By comparison, the Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama, which builds SUVs and employs 3,800 people, is 3 million square feet. But the Cross Lander plant makes many of its own parts; after all, it has its own foundry.
One of the final hurdles to clear, Perez says, is that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration requires front air bags on vehicles that weigh less than 5,500 pounds. The Cross Lander has no air bags, and it weighs a not-so-svelte 5,200 pounds. Perez has asked for an exemption, based on the economic hardship adding air bags would place on the company, and the fact that the Cross Lander, largely derived from a military vehicle, is designed primarily for off-road driving.
And if he doesn’t get the exemption? “We’ll just add 300 pounds to the chassis,” Perez says.
The Cross Lander is already no lightweight, with a massive frame and heavy parts. The length is 178 inches, width 72.2 inches, with a 102-inch wheelbase — dimensions that are roughly comparable to a Nissan Xterra, which weighs 4,380 pounds in its heaviest configuration. The Cross Lander that will be sold in the United States, the 244X model, is a foot longer than the regular Romanian vehicle, with almost all that room added to rear-seat legroom. The Ford V-6 engine — though Cross Lander is contractually prohibited from revealing that it’s a Ford engine — has 207 horsepower, and is offered with a Ford four-speed automatic transmission, or an Eaton five-speed manual.
How much will it cost? “It will start at just under $20,000,” Perez says, “but this one, the top of the line, will sell for just under $24,000.” We are sitting in a white Cross Lander with the automatic transmission; it’s outfitted with a Clarion stereo, air conditioning, a big Warn winch on the front bumper and a welded-on trailer hitch on the rear. It’s dressed up with chrome wheels, a half-dozen off-road spotlights, and some black aluminum diamond-plate metal sheets pop-riveted to the hood.
All Cross Landers will be four-wheel drive, with the front axle engaged by manual locking hubs of the sort you don’t see very often anymore.
It’s rustic, not particularly pretty, and some of the parts don’t fit very well. A right-rear door on one of the two display vehicles won’t close properly. We are told, though, that these two vehicles have led a hard life and are not representative of what will reach dealers this October, give or take a month or two.
This was the first chance most of the dealers had to not only drive a Cross Lander, but to see one in person. Although it would be a stretch to assume any of the dealers think that Cross Lander will be the next Honda, they are convinced that there’s a place in the market for it. And it does not hurt when Perez tells them that the dealer profit margin on the Cross Lander will be higher than on any comparable vehicle.
Rocky Kaiser, who runs Kaiser Pontiac, Buick and GMC in DeLand, was one of the first to sign up to sell Cross Landers. “It’s the kind of vehicle I’ve been dreaming of since I was a kid, to play in the woods with,” he says. “They’re solid as a rock — you get home from the woods, and you take a garden hose and wash it out.”
On the road, the Cross Lander has a smooth ride, likely the result of fairly soft springs and the weight it carries. Brakes, while adequate, are also taxed by the bulk.
The inside is Spartan, with rubber floor mats. The Cross Lander is used as a beast of burden in Romania and is built to last and to be easily repaired if it breaks, says Romanian Ambassador Sorin Dumitru Ducaru, whose presence at the dealer meeting was taken as a sign that all is well with Romania.
“We’re very proud of this vehicle,” Ducaru says. “It’s a reliable car because you need reliable in Romania. It’s a legend there. And it will be here, too. It’d be a great marketing campaign — ‘From the mountains of Dracula to the off-road trails of America!’ “
Also in attendance was U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce William Lash, whose presence suggested that Cross Lander has at least one friend in the U.S. government. “Going off-road is an American tradition,” Lash says. “I mean, there wouldn’t be an America if no one went off-road!”
Perez would like to sell between 8,000 and 10,000 Cross Landers a year, a modest number. “It’s a niche vehicle,” he says.
Was there ever a time, though, during the past 15 years, that he wondered why he was fighting this fight?
“Was there a time?” says Perez, laughing. “How about a hundred times?
“I’d do it again, though. I think it will be worth it. I know it will.”
In Romania, the Cross Lander is known as a beast of burden. In this country, it’s meant to be driven off-road. The SUV will be powered by a V-6 Ford engine.
