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Home > Autos & Other Vehicles > GTs, Coupes & Convertibles > Feature: The Flying Dutchman

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  Greg Jarem

Feature: The Flying Dutchman

Ezra Dyer

February 1, 2007

Hey, is that an Aston Martin?” yells a roofing contractor in a pickup as I step from the Fisker Tramonto. “No, it’s a Fisker,” I tell him, prompting a disbelieving, “Oh, [expletive]! That’s the Fisker? I’ve never seen one of those in person!” With a production run of 150 cars, most people probably never will see a Tramonto, and that exclusivity is a big part of the reason you would spend upward of $100,000 to reskin your Mercedes SL55, SL65, or SL600.

The other main reason is the man behind the design, Henrik Fisker. It says a lot about Fisker’s design language that a random roofer in New Jersey can recognize the Tramonto’s Aston connection. Before founding Fisker Coachbuild in 2005, Henrik Fisker worked at Aston, where he sculpted the DB9 and V8 Vantage. Before that, he designed the Z8 for BMW. Fisker’s personal portfolio is crucial to the Tramonto, because otherwise this former Benz’s very Aston-like front end would amount to a high-society exercise in gluing Testarossa strakes on a Fiero. Instead, the Tramonto has heritage, a pedigree earned through Henrik Fisker’s connection to some of the sexiest exotic cars on the road.

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Bespoke Fisker options do not end with the Tramonto’s coachwork: Significant interior and engine upgrades are also on the menu. (Click image to enlarge)

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That pedigree is further enhanced by the materials and craftsmanship that go into the Tramonto’s metamorphosis from Mercedes to Fisker. While Fisker Coachbuild is based in California, each car is sent to Turin for the fitting of its new body, which replaces every Mercedes panel except the top, the windshield pillars, the mirrors, and the door handles. With the Mercedes body unbolted, a Fisker begins to take shape from the bare SL chassis. “We felt the SL was the best possible platform because it’s well engineered, with incredible levels of safety and technology,” Fisker says. “And it’s also the only supercar with a retractable hard top. You can use it for everyday driving.” For customers looking for backseats and more of a GT car, Fisker is also building 150 examples of the Latigo, which is based on the BMW 6-Series.

The Tramonto’s entire front end is rendered in carbon fiber. The door skins are aluminum, and the rear quarter panels are the only steel on the car (the rest of the rear end is carbon fiber). Panel gaps are limited to 3 mm. With a track one inch wider than an SL’s, Fisker is able to stuff bespoke deep-dish wheels under the subtly flared fenders. (Click image to enlarge)

Fisker charges between $105,000 and $110,000 to turn an SL into a Tramonto, but it seems unlikely most owners will stop at the bodywork—in the realm of custom coachbuilding, your wish is their command, as long as you wish to part with a commanding bundle of loot. For example, the car I drove featured the $35,500 interior custom package, which is basically an obsessive replacement of plastic with leather and aluminum. The seats, in particular, were gorgeous, covered in Italian leather (untreated Italian leather is another option). You can also specify engine upgrades, bigger brakes, and probably a horn that plays Yankee Doodle, if that is what turns you on. Fisker Coachbuild is not in the business of saying no.

This, says Fisker, is one of the advantages of owning his own small company: the elimination of accountants from the design process. “When you have your own company, there’s only a couple of people making decisions,” he says. “You can do things you couldn’t otherwise, like making the center console out of one piece of aluminum. At a bigger car company, cost-cutters would say, ‘Nobody can tell the difference. Make it plastic.’ But you can tell the difference. It’s like having a real diamond versus a fake.”

With its 150-car production run, the Tramonto treads the line between exclusivity and everyday drivability—should you have the misfortune of a carbon-fiber fender-cracker, Fisker has a stash of spares of each part. You would not be able to get a Tramonto body fixed at your local Crazy Larry’s Dent ’n’ Ding, but neither will the car be totaled by a runaway shopping cart.