Taking on America – with a twist

During lockdown, while most of us were busy not learning to speak new languages or play new instruments, he secured a seven-figure sum and with just one other employee launched a new business to sell customised Land Rover Defenders in America and the Gulf.

The company, Twisted-USA, owns and operates three separate entities – Twisted North America, Twisted Middle East, and Twisted Electric Vehicles – all working under the Twisted brand.

Based at Thirsk in North Yorkshire, Twisted does an eye-catching line in revamped – or “twisted” – Land Rovers and Mr Maxwell is taking them Stateside. Perhaps surprisingly under the current circumstances, business has taken off, and the Covid pandemic even appears to be working in his favour.

““With things as they are now, a lot of people have been thinking ‘anything can happen’, so they just don’t see the point in waiting around,” he told The Yorkshire Post. “If they’ve always fancied having a Land Rover, they’re thinking ‘why not now?’.

“Some people have struggled through lockdown, but we really haven’t.”

Mr Maxwell now employs over 30 staff and the firm is on target to turn over more than $7.5m this year. Not bad for a man who only left Tadcaster Grammar School in 2013.

The Land Rover was first produced in the late 1940s as an agricultural answer to the American Willys Jeep, so marketing it in the US – the home of the 4x4 – could have been a tough sell. But within a couple of years of its US launch in 1992 sales had picked up nicely.

Yet that ended in 1998, when the US introduced stricter regulations, requiring all new vehicles to be equipped with double front airbags and side-impact crash protection. Land Rover baulked at the expense and pulled out of the American market.

The company, which is now owned by the Indian group Tata, has just relaunched a new Slovakian-made version of the Defender in the US.

But while you can take the brand out of Britain, it seems it’s far harder to take Britain out of the brand, and for US customers the original Defender’s provenance is beguiling.

“In The US, there are a lot of people who really like cars – big ones – and there are a lot of people who really like British things; there are a lot of anglophiles over there,” says Mr Maxwell.

“So because Land Rovers are large British 4x4s, they’re very popular in the US. Also, because it’s hard to get them over there you don’t get to see many, so they have rarity value too.”

In fact, the old-style Defender has achieved cult status in the US, and that’s one of the things that separates buyers of the brand-new Defenders from Twisted customers. Whereas Jaguar Land Rover recently blamed its Covid-hit sales in the US on the inability of its customers to try them out beforehand – no test drive, no sale – Mr Maxwell says 80-85 per cent of Twisted’s US customers are so keen that they don’t act-ually see a car before buying it.

That said, according to Mr Maxwell, American drivers tend to be more demanding than their UK counterparts, so although they like the look and history of a Defender, they want it to be quieter and more comfortable, with modern specifications: electric windows, cruise control, parking and lane sensors and an infotainment system.

“When we’re selling in the US, there are no caveats, no explanations needed,” says Mr Maxwell. “With traditional Land Rovers, you have to explain about the fact that they tend to leak, or that the doors sometimes don’t fit properly, and for some people maybe that’s part of the charm.

“But Americans aren’t interested in those kinds of excuses – they don’t want to know. They just want things to be right, and they want the modern features they’re used to – and that’s what we provide.”

Importing cars to the US can be notoriously tricky, but here’s where the genius of Mr Maxwell’s business model lies. Under US law, once a car chassis is 25 years old it counts as a heritage vehicle and can be imported, so Twisted-USA buys up 25-year-old Defenders, ships them over there and then completely reconstructs them using British parts and US-made GM engines.

“There were a lot of Defenders made, and we’re really not that picky,” he says. “All we want is the shell, because once we get it to the US it gets completely stripped down and rebuilt. Next year there’ll be another raft of 25-year-old vehicles, and there will be every year, all the way up to 25 years after the last one rolled off the production line in 2015. And by that point, the vehicles we sell now will be ready to come in again, and the whole process can start again.”

Twisted-USA is opening a showroom in Austin, Texas, has another 50 acres just outside the city for further facility development, and has “quite ad-vanced” plans for outlets in Los Angeles, New York, and Miami.

In the Middle East, the group has opened a workshop facility in Dubai and has plans for retail space in the luxurious Dubai Mall and at a location in Abu Dhabi.

Twisted Electric Vehicles has secured an exclusive partnership with Dutch electrification specialist Plower, and has just launched a fully electric Twisted Defender.

Mr Maxwell says the new firm is “very, very busy”, but if Covid couldn’t dent the firm’s prospects, might not an unfavourable US election result in November?

“At $250,000 a time, you’re not buying one of these vehicles because you need it, and people who can afford them don’t tend to be very affected by election outcomes,” he says.

“If people want the car, they buy the car. It’s a toy, a luxury, and when it comes down to it, it’s also an escape from all that.”