You Can’t Sell a Car That Looks Like Crap 174
The process of building the Roadster began. Tesla opened
an office at the Lotus campus Hethel in Norfolk, England,
which is built on an old airfield previously used by Amer-
ican bombers during the Second World War. They also
hired several engineers who had been forced to leave Lotus
because of financial reasons. The Roadster is not built on an
Elise chassis – Tesla licensed the Elise chassis technology
and the engineers in Britain designed the Roadster’s chassis
using that technology.^267
As Elon had no direct responsibility in the design
process, he attended the Tesla board meetings once every
six weeks, and he phoned every couple of days. They often
used his private jet. “He lives in southern California, but
he’d jump in his jet and fly up here at a moment’s notice,”
Tarpenning said. “When we were trying to recruit some
pretty high-level people from Detroit, Elon flew his jet here,
picked us up and took us along to meet those people.” Also
Eberhard was impressed by Elon’s lifestyle. “It was surreal.
I’d go to visit him in my Mazda 3, and we’d go for a drive
in his McLaren F1,” he said.^205
Elon let Eberhard run Tesla without interfering in the
daily work. Using skills gained from building rockets at
SpaceX, Elon could often suggest new types of materials
and techniques to use in the Roadster to save weight. He
also worked with building the Tesla brand. “There were
signs that he wanted to fiddle in the details, but it wasn’t
enough to make me run screaming,” Wright said. “Musk
is a technically savvy guy who wanted to help.” Elon,
who had owned several of the world’s top sports cars, was