Dustin

HOWARD BECKER’S VAN CONVERSIONS MAKE ONE SUITE RIDE.

By Larry Armstrong

Reprinted from Business Week, January 16, 2006

From the outside it looks like an airport van, the kind that whisks you from baggage claim to a hotel. Inside, though, it’s more like a Gulfstream G150 or Dassault Falcon executive jet. There’s a curved ceiling with indirect and pinpoint LED lighting, sumptuous leather seats with electrically deployed leg rests, hand-veneered tray tables that stow away in armrests and consoles. A wide-screen TV pops up in the front of the cabin; another drops from the ceiling in the rear.

Welcome aboard the Becker JetVan, a Dodge Sprinter passenger van outfitted with the amenities of a private jet and all the tools of an airborne office, including satellite phones, a docking station for a laptop, and a high-speed Internet connection. It’s the brainchild of Howard Becker, a veteran of the custom car business and owner of Becker Automotive Design Inc. in Oxnard, Calif.

“I call it my stealth limo,” says Mitzi Perdue, who bought one so her favorite charities could ferry guest speakers and celebs in style from Philadelphia or Washington airports to fund-raisers in her rural Maryland hometown, a three-hour trip. “If I can provide them with a mobile office, that’s not wasted time,” she says. “They can get some work done on the way.”

The same logic appealed to Eric Holm, who with his wife, Diane, owns 36 Golden Corral and Sonny’s Real Pit Bar-B-Q restaurants around Atlanta and Orlando. “If I’m driving myself in traffic, I’m not getting my work done. But if I’m sitting in the office, I can’t visit the restaurants,” says Holm, who likes to stop by each location at least once every other week. Holm stores the van in his hangar at the DeKalb Peachtree Airport north of Atlanta. He likes the $250,000 JetVan enough — “the interior is just like a private jet,” he says — that he plans to buy a second one to keep in Florida later this year.

The vans are sleek, six-figure propositions by the time Becker is finished with them. He starts with the $44,000 long-wheelbase, high-roof version (a six-footer can stand up in it) of the Dodge Sprinter passenger van. Built in Dusseldorf, Germany, it’s sold as the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter outside North America. Becker restores the Mercedes (DCX ) trim, tunes the turbo diesel engine for more power, and tweaks the suspension for a softer ride.

From there it’s whatever the customer wants. Options can drive the price into the $200,000-to-$300,000 range. Becker offers a choice of six “standard” floor plans that seat from four to seven, not counting the driver and one passenger up front. Most buyers opt for a partition between the driver and passenger compartments; when the privacy window is up, it holds a 30-inch flat-screen TV for entertainment and computer displays.

But it’s the aircraft-style interior, with its extensive use of lightweight, honeycomb, and composite materials, that sets the JetVan apart from ordinary van conversions. Becker’s newest option takes the private jet look even further: electric window shades, essentially folding blinds sandwiched between the outside glass and inside plastic. Depending on the number of windows you want covered, that can cost up to $40,000 extra.

Becker will also personalize the interior to his customers’ tastes. Perdue, daughter of one of the founders of Sheraton Hotels & Resorts (HOT ) and widow of Perdue Farms Inc.’s Frank Perdue, wanted hers to reflect the color scheme of a bejeweled Faberge-like egg she designed. Becker obliged, finding a handmade Pakistani rug with similar colors, refinishing the Rolls-Royce toggle switches for the lighting controls to brushed gold instead of the customary silver, and piping the leather seats in a complementary color. The final touch: He mounted the egg on a Waterford vase that guests pass by when they climb into the van.

Moving On Up

Becker got his start right out of college working at his father’s car stereo store in Los Angeles. In the ’70s he moved to a storefront half a block south of Beverly Hills and began pitching upgraded sound systems to Hollywood celebrities and entertainment moguls. As the business grew, he found himself doing complete conversions, revamping big SUVs with posh interiors and lots of electronics. Five years ago he found his customer base changing, too, from the likes of Barbra Streisand and Eddie Murphy to businessmen such as Eric Holm and real estate developer John Scardino, so he decamped Beverly Hills for an industrial park in Oxnard, 50 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

Scardino appreciates the look and feel of the JetVan. He normally travels in Pilatus PC-12 and Falcon 50 jets and often commutes from Los Angeles to California’s central coast in his L39 fighter jet. But what he really needed was an office. “My ‘offices’ are basically the trailers at all our building sites,” he says. “There’s no phone, no water, no nothing.” He prefers to drive himself, so he’s having a sliding door put between the driver’s compartment and the passenger cabin, and he wants a clothes rack and tiny bathroom in the cargo area behind the rear seats.

Earlier, Scardino tried building an office into a 40-foot mobile home, but it was so difficult to drive and park, that he sold it within six months. When he gets his van in January, it will have a computer, printer, fax, phone, and high-speed Net access. And it will provide a businesslike environment for meetings with his bankers and partners. “If you think about it, it’s where I work and where we scout out our properties,” he adds. “So now I can have my office in the middle of nowhere, too.”

WHEN TIME IS MONEY – LOTS AND LOTS OF IT – A QUARTER-MILLION-DOLLAR SUV CONVERSION FROM BECKER CAN BE WORTH EVERY PENNY.

By Todd Lappin, Business 2.0 Magazine senior editor

Reprinted from Business 2.0, April, 2006

Some executives soar with eagles. They’re the power brokers who fly in peerless comfort, efficiency, and style on wings made by Gulfstream or Learjet. Yet there’s another breed of titans who keep their feet firmly planted on terra firma. These moguls are rich, yes, and their time is also very valuable, but in the course of doing business, they’re more likely to shuttle between, say, Long Beach and Burbank than to jet from LAX to JFK. Whether they’re real estate developers or fast-food kingpins cruising from one Pizza Hut franchise to the next, they need to be productive on the road.

I’m sitting in their dream ride–a $250,000 mobile office masquerading as just another hulking SUV. It’s a 2005 Ford Excursion painted Darth Vader black, with rear windows tinted so deeply they look like granite countertops. But this is no gaudy stretch limo on prom night. Quite the opposite: Though the rims are chrome and the roof is slightly raised, the vehicle’s length is unchanged and the manufacturer’s nameplates have been scrupulously purged from the exterior. Like a crisp black suit, this vehicle exudes understated power.

Inside, however, there are amenities galore. I’m stretched out on a handcrafted leather chair that looks like a business-class seat on an overseas flight. There are curtains on the windows, and my feet are propped up on an electric footrest that a dentist would envy. In front of me, a 32-inch LCD screen acts as a divider that quarantines me from the driver’s compartment.

A full-size Dell PC rides shotgun up front, so my big screen can function as a standard computer display, with high-speed Internet access provided by a Verizon EVDO card. A wireless keyboard sits on an airplane-style foldout tray, and I can control the cursor using an infrared pointer that nestles in a custom-fitted leather cradle. With a twist of a big chrome dial next to my right arm, however, I can change the picture entirely to see our position on Interstate 405 using the GPS navigation system, or view the freeway for real from either of two closed-circuit video-cameras, or watch car chases on the local news via DirecTV , or even play Grand Theft Auto on the PlayStation 2.

The screen is my window on the world, because, with the curtains drawn, the view through the windshield blocked by the divider, and layers of sound-deadening material maintaining a churchlike hush, the cabin feels eerily isolated from the sun-baked frustration of the grinding L.A. traffic outside.

Which is exactly the point, according to Howard Becker, the founder of Becker Automotive Design. His company built this particular rolling corner office for an L.A. asset manager, and at his vehicle conversion facility in Oxnard, Calif., Becker maintains a busy staff of 40 mechanics, metalworkers, upholsterers, leather craftsmen, and electronics experts.

All those people make a lot of noise, so when I dropped in, he led me to a nondescript Ford van parked in a corner of the workshop. The doors felt heavy (armor plating, he explained), and the interior was engraved with the coat of arms of a prominent Middle Eastern royal family. Silence enveloped us when the doors thumped shut, and as we settled into the reclining seats, Becker explained what his clients pay him to do. “They’re looking for a seamless kind of motion in their lives,” he said. “They want the vehicle to be a place where they can concentrate, rest, reduce stress, and focus.”

Becker combines the gregariousness of a car stereo salesman (which he once was) with the worldly attentiveness of a personal tailor (which he sort of is). To build a mobile office, he starts with an SUV fresh from the dealer. Every vehicle is crafted to the owner’s specifications, which typically means stripping the interior down to the bare sheet metal and starting over. Fixtures are fabricated, seating is stitched, the electrical system gets a high-voltage upgrade, handpicked electronics are wired in, and everything gets wrapped in acres of soft leather. As a finishing touch, Becker replaces the standard solid axle with a custom-made independent rear suspension that does much to smooth out the ride for the lucky VIP who sits in back.

Today that happens to be me, so en route to a meeting at Fox Studios in Century City, I try some perfunctory Web surfing to feign productivity. But soon I yield to temptation and begin exploring my cocoon. In addition to the big chrome dial, I find four remotes controlling four different devices. Figuring out how to operate my arsenal of personal electronics is befuddling at first, but for this Howard Becker is not to blame–I challenge any visitor to my home to divine what combination of buttons must be pressed to channel music from my iPod through the living room amplifier to the patio speakers. It’s not hard, but doing it quickly requires familiarity with the intricacies of the interface. And indeed, after a few minutes of fiddling, I bring the DVD player to life. Top Gun begins to play on the LCD screen. How perfect.

Twenty blissful minutes later, as we arrive at Fox Studios, the 11-speaker sound system is filling the cabin with the roar of Maverick’s F-14. Two security guards usher us into a parking space reserved for oversize vehicles and ogle the interior as I step out. As my eyes adjust to the sudden flood of daylight, I feel conspicuously refreshed. Energized, even. And most certainly focused. Becker has worked his magic. Seamless motion may not be a luxury everyone can afford, but it turns out to be a quality that anyone can learn to appreciate.

AT OUR BECK AND CALL

by Christian Gullikse

Reprinted from Robb Report Worth, October 2004

Behind the nondescript facade of an obscure Oxnard, Calif., shop, Howard Becker transforms mundane SUVs and vans into ultraluxe transport for the likes of Edgar Bronfman Jr., Tiger Woods and King Abdullah of Jordan. His clients want the accoutrements of a Rolls-Royce or a Maybach, but would rather do without the attention those cars tend to attract-at least some of the time.

Almost nothing blends into the crowd more easily than a Ford Excursion or E-350 Super Duty van-Becker’s usual platforms-but there is not anything ordinary about his interiors. The typical layout of an SUV conversion calls for the removal of the second- and third-row seats, replaced by two large chairs and up to three-rear-facing jump seats, all upholstered in high-grade leather. Beautifully finished wood trim accents the cabin. A large flat-screen monitor doubles as a divider that can be raised and lowered, and can be linked to entertainment and computer systems. Satellite links, a wireless keyboard, telephones and a collapsible desk allow us full connectivity during our journey. For relaxation, the seats fully recline and CDs and DVDs provide entertainment. (With the emergence of Wi-Fi networking, in-car entertainment options are expanding. We will soon be able to enjoy media downloads from our home computers.) Thanks to proprietary suspension modifications, the quality of the SUV’s ride is much better than we night expect, and it is unlikely we will be jolted awake from a nap. Vans – generally Fords or Mercedes-Benz Sprinters – offer an even greater measure of room and versatility – individual chairs or sofas, for instance. And as they are lass fashionable than SUVs, vans can also achieve an even lower profile.

Different levels of stealthiness can be achieved. Leave the exterior of an Excursion or a GMC Denali completely stock and no one will be the wiser. Specify an all-black exterior with custom wheels and satellite equipment mounted on the roof and other motorists will take notice. Most Becker cars fall somewhere in the middle.

The importance of stealth often hinges on our security concerns. Becker’s priority is creating environments that feel as normal as possible. Touches such as full operational windows all-around mean that adults feel less claustrophobic and children might not even realize they are riding in an armored car. We thought the armored Excursion felt weightier that the standard car, and was not nearly as confining as some armored sedans currently on the market.

A Becker SUV or van with every luxury and armoring option can top $365,000, about the price of an unmodified Rolls-Royce Phantom or Maybach. Unarmored examples typically sell just north of $200,000.

BECKER AUTOMOTIVE DESIGN: EXCURSION EXECUTIVE LIMOUSINE

Edited by John Kiewicz

Reprinted from Motor Trend Magazine, March 2001

The market’s strong and you’re finally doing well. You travel a lot and need to conduct business while you go about the town. You need a large, classy rig in which to pick up and entertain clients. Whatever the reason, you’re now in the market for a personal limousine. The only problem is you don’t want a traditional (stodgy-looking) stretch limo.

Becker Automotive Design has just what you need, and more. Becker specializes in creating personal limos using Ford’s more-than-full-size Excursion that not only offers loads of interior space, but will also tow a large boat or trailer. The best part is that nobody will know that the Becker Excursion is a limo, so you’ll have your privacy and security as you and your associates are shuttled around town.

The Becker Excursion contains all the traditional stuff you’d expect in a limo, including upgraded (super comfortable) seating, loads of legroom, food/drink service areas, plusher carpeting with extra sound-deadening materials, and more-but goes many steps further. Depending on how you option your Excurlimo, you can include items such as a 20-in. video/computer/navigation LCD monitor, Philips navigation system, a Dell Optiplex GX1 Pentium III computer, wireless Internet modem, a Palm Pilot interface setup, Nintendo/Sega/Sony video games, and even a Sony DVD system. Becker (known in Beverly Hills as the audio store of the stars) can also fit your Excursion with a custom audio package consisting of items such as a Nakamichi AM/FM/CD player, Panasonic DTS digital sound decoder, a plethora of speakers, including a pair of 10-in. sub-woofers, custom-built equalizer, and 600 watts of Sony power-all good for a serious brain bruise. Leather, suede, and carpeting are all of Rolls-Royce quality-or better.

Externally, Becker spruces up the look of the Excursion by color-sanding the factory paint and adding items such as body kits, cowl-induction hoot, special side mirrors, aftermarket billet grille, and auxiliary lighting. Performance improvements come in the form of 3-in.-diameter Remus chrome oval exhaust tips, Rancho 9000 adjustable shocks, and Boyd’s 18-in. aluminum wheels wrapped in Pirelli Scorpion p285/60R18 tires.

When it comes to security, the Becker Excursion limo doesn’t dissapiont with its extremely elaborate electronic protection system. But if you need even more, the Excursion can be fitted with Becker’s Ultimate Security Package that includes armor plating capable of withstanding “full metal jacket” gunshots and rocket-propelled grenades. Don’t forget rem-style bumpers, Runflat tires, remote engine start, and even GPS tracking of the vehicle.

Now that you’ve made it big, leave those traditional stretch limos to movie stars and heads of state; consider a discreet, though decidedly large, Becker Excursion. Sorry, driver not included.