We recently connected with IKER ECHEVERRIA and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, IKER thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?
The story behind my mission is simple: it has always been about unique, exhilarating experiences. My father is a professional racing driver, from whom I inherited a passion for all things automotive, and it is because of him that a spark ignited a relentless pursuit for these experiences throughout my life, in all aspects.
A racing vehicle is a complex, yet very simple machine, with a single purpose. It provides unfiltered sensations to the driver; not only during hard acceleration or late braking, but also the smells, temperatures, every single change in the car and the road, and much more. It is a compound of sensations that make it quite unique. And let’s not forget it must withstand the harshest of environments during racing, in conditions no road car will ever face.
When founding VUHL, my intention was to create a road-legal vehicle capable of providing those unfiltered racing experiences to the driver, while maintaining extreme performance standards. With every car we build, with every decision in the company, with every spin-off we take part in, there is always a mission and it is to provide the highest quality, most unique, motorsport-insipired experience we can.
Whether it is through our record-breaking vehicles, our technical apparel, or our collaborations with other brands, I believe my mission is being accomplished.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am an entrepreneur. My brother Guillermo and I created VUHL, originally a supercar brand, when I was about 24 years old. We’re in the ´racecar for the road´ niche which is a kind of supercar that is as closely related to a racing vehicle as possible while maintaining certain characteristics allowing it to be street-legal worldwide. VUHL has evolved into a lifestyle statement with several spin-offs throughout the years: a limited edition tequila, an technical apparel collection, and even a hookah manufacturer (to be announced), to name a few.
With an Industrial Design background, we’re passionate about details, functionality, and how it all relates to a motorsports heritage: our father, Guillermo Echeverría Sr., successfully raced for over 30 years and to this day, works in his performance shop out of a never-ending passion for motorsports.
Having seen my father race, repair, design, fix, and race again, it was all but a natural course for me to be interested and really involved in the whole experience around motorsports; seeing him win a championship was as important to me as seeing him work on his racing cars with such love and passion that my brother and I had no choice but to fall in love with motorsports as well… and so we did.
Eventually, we wanted to feel those exhilarating experiences in a vehicle that we could take out on the street as well, in typical British gentleman racer fashion. That was exactly the inspiration behind VUHL, and how Motorsports and Industrial Design came together to see a Mexican supercar born.
What sets VUHL apart is the possibility of driving a road-legal supercar capable of breaking lap records around the world, providing the most unfiltered, exciting driving experience. It sits in a sweet spot between an uber-expensive supercar that you’d hardly push to its limits on the circuit, and a full-on racecar that requires a whole different set of skills, logistics, and investment; not to mention those aren’t street-legal. In short, it’s a car that you can drive from your garage to the track, be the fastest around it, and then drive back without a single worry.
I’m very proud of what we have achieved and how capable our vehicles are, but also, of all the opportunities that have arisen and that we’ve pursued: the latest of which is our Miami-launched technical wear, an apparel collection made with functionality in mind and inspired by motorsports as well. Through this collection, we get the chance to be bold and appeal to a different audience who might not be into supercars or might not know VUHL at all but recognizes the attention to detail, a one-of-a-kind design language, and a fashion statement that has an actual purpose other than looking good in a fluorescent orange light jacket.
We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.
Well, that’s an easy one, I was born a couple of years after him in the same family! My brother Guillermo and I are VUHL Co-Founders and while it might seem like a familiar story (see Dodge brothers or Briggs brothers) it turns out we developed our own set of skills, preferences, and business abilities while growing up in the same environment. We’re very different from each other, and that’s exactly what makes VUHL a successful company: the balance between my endless pursuit for more (more power, more speed, a better design, optimized vehicle dynamics) and Guillermo’s remarkable business nature, where everything is carefully planned and he makes it run like clockwork, considering even our wildest dreams in a system that makes everything possible.
We’ve built a strong team around our abilities and I think there is no one better suited to understand our Motorsports Heritage and to share the vision for the company, than my own brother.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
The ultra-lightweight supercar story is an exciting one, isn’t it? Well, the initial capital was raised through a business that wasn’t even remotely related to it. Fresh out of college, we were eager to start working on our idea for a new, unfiltered, engaging supercar, but we really didn’t have any funding at the time (or a design, or a name). We quickly realized that to get the ball rolling we should be the ones giving it the first push in any way we could, and for us, it meant it was time to create an aggressive business plan and stick to it.
Making the most of what we had immediately within reach, we started an industrial design business: ETXE Diseño. It meant at the time that we were ready to take on any client, any contract, and any challenge that could take us a step closer to our goal which was funding the supercar company. For several months which -to be honest- felt like an eternity, we were working nonstop and giving our absolute best with a single goal in mind, and in the process, we won design awards, made great friends, and consolidated our first company while striving to start working on the car that some years after would be launched at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in the UK for all the world to see.
To this day, ETXE is a successful design and engineering business, catering to the aerospace and automotive industries around the world.
Contact Info:
- Website: vuhl05.com / vuhldesign.com
- Instagram: @ikerecheverria / @vuhlautomotive / @vuhldesign
- Facebook: VUHL Automotive / VUHL
Image Credits
Image credits (applies to all images): Pepe Beltrán