Bricklin: the Musical starts Friday. Bricklinmusical.ca

The man behind New Brunswick's most famous car — and now its most famous musical — confirmed that he will see the show he inspired.

Malcolm Bricklin rose to fame with his futuristic sports car, the Bricklin SV-1, in the 1970s. Then premier Richard Hatfield saw it as a new hope for the province's economy.

It boasted of its safety features (the full name was Safety Vehicle 1) and came only in safety green, safety orange, safety red, safety white and safety suntan.

New Brunswick invested millions of dollars to set up factories in the province to sell the car to the U.S. Bricklin sold 5,000 cars before even one was manufactured. Problems quickly overtook the car and the plant produced 800 cars in 1974 and 2,100 in 1975.

Fewer than 3,000 ended up being made and the factories shut down in 1975. The adventure cost the province more than $20 million.

The curious episode was set to music last year and became a hit at Fredericton's Playhouse and is back this summer.

Too many obstacles for gull-winged car

On Wednesday, Bricklin said that this summer, he would see The Bricklin: An Automotive Fantasy for the first time. He still believes his gull-winged car could have driven the New Brunswick economy, if only it had gotten the right support.

"If one party was for the car, then the other party was against the car, and that made it impossible for us to miss deadlines or to make a mistake," he said.

Bricklin said the other challenge was finding workers to fill the company's plants in Minto and Saint John.

"You worked, it was either 90 or 120 days, and you got one year unemployment. We were getting sometimes 70 and 80 per cent turnover."

Bricklin believes if he had had more time to work out the glitches, the car would have been a huge success. But despite losing so much time and money, he said he had fun and is looking forward to reliving the story at the theatre.

Bricklin is still in the car business — he's working to create a line of plug-in hybrid vehicles.

The Bricklin: An Automotive Fantasy kicks off Friday night and runs until Aug. 7.