Leela Motors

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Leela Motors was formed to cater to the needs of a few select people who get a thrill out of the purest form of high performance driving. Pure performance is our goal: no frills, no unnecessary gadgets, no extras, no fluff. Everything on the car is functional and serves one purpose- to make the car go, corner, and stop, fast.

It all started a long time ago...

When I was 13 a friend introduced me to Road & Track magazine. The imprint on me has been permanent so far. I became a sports car enthusiast in the extreme. Born in Switzerland, and after moving to England, Canada, and the US, my family moved back to Switzerland at age 14. This was awesome because Geneva where we lived was home to most of the sports cars I had read about in R & T magazine. What's more, we drove over mountain passes where a cars handling really came in to play. Curves and hairpins everywhere! Many times we drove up over the snowy passes and down to the sunlit riviera to bask on the beaches of the Mediterranean. My parents made a good choice.

Fortunately my parents also trusted me enough to let me drive the family car on country roads long before I had a license. I practiced the techniques I read about in books on high-speed driving, and even schooled my older brothers on how to take corners, downshift properly, and accelerate out of a turn. They were very good natured about having a really enthusiastic younger brother/co-pilot/driving instructor in the passenger seat with them!

While in Switzerland I had the good fortune to see several Hillclimb races. One in particular was the Ollon to Villars International Hillclimb. Here were 300 SL Gullwings, Ferraris, Maseratis, lots of Porsches, Alfas, Abarths, Lancias, Volvos, and more. A veritable candy store for the eyes with all the right sounds and smells. The mold in my head was cast. Sports cars were light, beautiful, cornered like they were on rails, the more cylinders the better, and the faster spun, even better. My ideal car at that time had nothing that was not functional, and that should be kept to an absolute minimum. Long ago the mold was set for what almost 50 years later became the Leela Spyder.

After leaving Switzerland we returned to the States and spent a year in Boulder, Colorado where I attended Boulder High, and my two older brothers attended University. Here I got my driver's license so now I could legally drive on public roads. How cool! I had bought a 1948 Norton 500 single cylinder motorcycle at a police auction in Geneva for $17.50 (US) and this became my transportation to school. I rode it 4 miles to school every day of the year. There were times when the entire first period was spent thawing out from the ride and writing with a pen was out of the question. The bike was so heavy I could not pick it up if it fell, so riding in the snow sometimes with my sister on the back required special care, and faith on her part.

After Colorado, my adventurous, i.e. fearless mother, decided we should go to Mexico and meet some members of our family who had settled there who we had never met. So I was asked to select a family car for the trip south to Mexico. After looking at just a few cars my attention fell on a 6 cylinder Ford Falcon wagon with a 4 speed floor shift. Perfect!! Practical, economical, roomy enough for 3, plus all our gear and two black labs Raja and Rani, who were going along. I could toe-and-heel in it just fine. This is backwards for a reason. It was impossible to heel-and-toe in the Falcon so I had to be creative and do it the other way round.

The reason I bring the Mexico stay into this account is that it was here in this quasi-lawless land that I was able to practice my driving skills to the max on public roads. Mexico has fairly good roads which go over mountain range after mountain range sometimes extending for over a 100 miles at a time. Endless curves, and no real speed limits except in towns. Of course there were risks: canyons and barrancas with few guard rails, donkeys, horses, cattle, and people wandering on the road. Contact with any of these could have serious consequences. Constraints can work to our advantage and having fun was high on the list but so was staying intact to do it another day, keeping in mind this was the 'family' car. So these became my race tracks. Because the Falcon was low on power learning to carry speed through a corner was necessary to make good time. While learning I think it helps to have an underpowered car because you learn how to conserve speed. If you start in a powerful car there could be a tendency to rely on straight line power rather than fully exploring the cars agility in and out of a corner.

A lot has changed since then and some hasn't. Bodies age but we get wiser. What hair there is on my head is mostly grey, and a few old accidents serve as reminders that I have acquired 'experience', but aside from that do we really grow up?. After raising a family, operating a manufacturing and machining business for 25 years, and learning all the skills necessary to build a car, the time was right to build 'the car.' As I mentioned, the project was started a long time ago and I actually shelved it for a few years. But then I thought: I am far enough along, I should finish it, so back at it again. It did take a long time to finish it because I did virtually everything. The only outside help I had on the entire project was making the molds and the first set of body parts and I was the gopher on both these tasks. My sons helped with some of the fabricating and I am indebted to my friends Jesse Zepeda and Erik Rathmann, for the electrical work, who generously helped do what I had little inclination or talent for.

Why?

We live in north San Diego County, close to some of the best sports car roads in the country and we have about the best climate on earth. Also, my three sons were getting to an age where they could help out and learn some useful skills. Over the years I had acquired all the equipment necessary in my business to build everything, so the cost was not prohibitive. Over the years several sports cars saw action over the back roads of San Diego Co with me at the wheel, but the opportunity to build something original from scratch didn't come unitl later. Also, I wanted to beat some of the motorcycles up Palomar Mt. so the car had to have fantastic handling, grip, and acceleration.

For a lover of sports cars, to drive a mountain road in a sports car with the wind blowing, the sun shining in the blue sky, the scent of pine trees, and the sound of a good engine going through the gears, is an experience that maybe only dedicated enthusiasts can appreciate.