The Tomaso supercar revival hits speed bump with lawsuit against founder AllNews

A planned revival of Italian sports car brand De Tomaso as a $1 million supercar maker appears to have hit a speed bump with a lawsuit against the founder by the former CEO.

Ryan Berris, who joined De Tomaso Automobili Holdings NA in 2014 as CEO and lead developer of the planned P72 supercar, sued the company and its founder, Hong Kong financier Norman Choi, in Manhattan federal court on Wednesday. Berris claims he was fired last year for interfering with Choi’s plans to proceed with a blank check merger based on false information.

Choi became obsessed not with creating the perfect car to revive De Tomaso and serve the company’s discerning customers, but instead with trying to get the company public through a bogus SPAC process. bring,” Berris said in the indictment.

Berris claims he owes hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation and a 10% stake in the company that was once valued at a whopping $1.5 billion.

De Tomaso’s press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Choi was not immediately available for comment.

De Tomaso, best known for the Mangusta and Pantera sports coupes it introduced in the 1960s and 1970s, filed for bankruptcy in 2004. The rights to his name were eventually acquired in 2014 by Choi and a partner.

According to Berris, Choi contacted him soon after and the two met at a race track in Spain. At the time, Berris was working for Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus (SCG), an American manufacturer of high-performance racing and road cars whose SCG007 hypercar would take the podium at Le Mans in 2022.

“Desperate to avoid failure, Norman Choi begged Berris to take over the company and create a credible, world-class revival for the famous De Tomaso brand,” Berris’ lawyers at Boies Schiller Flexner LLP wrote in his complaint.

Berris says he agreed and went on to develop the P72, which was unveiled at the 2019 Goodwood Festival. A tribute to the De Tomaso P70, a legendary 1965 prototype co-developed by Alejandro De Tomaso and Carroll Shelby, the new car with a base price of $1 million proved to be a sensation, receiving more legitimate purchase applications than planned within a few days Limited production run of 72 units, according to the suit.

By early 2022, De Tomaso had received about $36 million in non-refundable deposits, with demand far outpacing supply, Berris claims. According to his lawsuit, Berris tried to raise more money to boost production of the P72, but Choi took a different approach.

$10 million apartment

“Choi began to cut corners behind Berris’s back, conjuring up false financial statements and misleading the discerning customers who put down all of their substantial down payments on De Tomaso’s vehicles,” Berris claims.

The former CEO alleges that Choi breached his fiduciary duty to De Tomaso by using more than $10 million in company funds to buy himself an apartment at Manhattan’s Hudson Yards. Choi was eager to raise even more money through a SPAC deal, Berris claims.

Choi allegedly told SPAC investors in financial statements that he put $3.1 million of his own money into De Tomaso, but Berris claims Choi made it clear to him in a text message that the money came from Sino Vision Worldwide Holdings Ltd .

According to the lawsuit, Sino Vision is a shell company affiliated with the so-called Enigma Network — a group of 50 Hong Kong companies identified by shareholder activist David Webb as stocks to be avoided due to their questionable trading practices and lack of transparency. Berris said many companies under Choi’s control were involved in the network.

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