In The News

Desire to innovate creates opportunity

Partners keen on modified 4-wheel-drive vehicles

By Kevin Leininger

of The News-Sentinel

Tom Kelley never thought he'd lose his Saturn dealership, any more than Steve Kitchin expected to be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

But now, by responding to their setbacks with entrepreneurial spirit and a little old-fashioned ingenuity, the two Fort Wayne men have found something: a mutually beneficial enterprise that could help boost the economy by liberating thousands of disabled Americans from the limitations of their bodies.

“It's bad enough that getting hurt takes your manhood away. Driving a minivan made it even worse. I'm not a soccer mom,” said Kitchin, 44, who broke his neck in an automobile accident 10 years ago and has been a quadriplegic ever since. He has enough use of his arms and hands to drive a modified van that recently broke down for good.

That got the former advertising executive to thinking about the kind of vehicle he'd like to drive next, which in turn led to the discovery that nobody was making four-wheel-drive vehicles that could be operated by severely disabled drivers.

Now Kitchin and some friends have created a company, GoShichi, to fill the void – with a big assist from a man whose auto empire was hit hard by General Motors' recent elimination of its Pontiac and Saturn brands.

“I was just driving by and saw the building was empty, and I knew (Kelley) is a good businessman,” said company president Kitchin, whose operation in the former Saturn building at 505 Avenue of Autos employs 10 people but expects to triple that number soon, on the way to a 60-member work force once production hits the target of 100 conversions per month.

An ambitious goal for a firm that has sold only six trucks so far? Yes. But Kitchin and Kelley insist that's only the beginning for a company offering a product to a client base that is, unfortunately, likely to grow.

But it wasn't the possibility of profit that initially caught Kitchin's attention. He simply wanted to find a more-exciting alternative to his old van, but quickly learned the options were limited. One Florida company, he said, produced two-wheel-drive versions featuring a lift stored under the vehicle. “I asked how that would work in ice and snow and they said, ‘We don't sell many up north,' ” Kitchin recalled.

So he, an engineer friend and others worked to design and build the kind of truck Kitchin and other people with disabilities would like to drive, but can't.

The result is a patented, heavy-duty mechanism that extends from the cab, lowers a platform able to accommodate a wheelchair, then raises the platform before retracting the driver back into the cab, where the chair is locked in place. Kitchin hopes to market the converted trucks through specialty dealerships nationwide, which will equip the trucks with steering mechanisms designed to accommodate each driver.

“When I got behind the wheel of our first truck, I couldn't help smiling,” said Kitchin, who is married and has two children. Kelley may soon be smiling, too. Even though he is allowing GoShichi to use his old 20,000-square-foot Saturn dealership rent-free, he sells the GMC and Chevrolet trucks Kitchin will use most – many of them made at GM's Allen County plant.

The handshake deal is already bearing fruit. Kitchin said a company on the East Coast has ordered 150 trucks, and with 40,000 converted vans being sold every year, the demand should be impressive. The four-wheel-drive option also should appeal to disabled veterans, Kelley said. GoShichi's conversions add about $25,000 to the cost of the truck, but government programs help pay the cost for veterans and others.

“It's nice to see somebody take an empty building and make something out of it,” Kelley said.

But what the two men have done is more than nice; it's a timely reminder that the American determination to overcome hardship through innovation, hard work and self-reliance somehow survives. It's a spirit embodied in the company's admittedly offbeat name, which combines the Japanese words for “five” and “seven” – the numbers Kitchin and his purposefully anonymous engineering partner wore on their softball uniforms after meeting as martial arts devotees.

Karate, sadly, is now beyond Kitchin's grasp. But thanks to his refusal to give up, the road ahead remains open to him and others like him – and in style.