Steve Hall spent two years working out of a corner of an auto dealership service bay. Then he built a wall down the middle of the showroom at his own car dealership in Provo, Utah, and turned half of it into a design center for research and development of an “autocycle.” Hall originally wanted to become the first American dealer for Noble, the English sports car maker, and the work of importing the cars taught him how federal vehicle certification works. “The barrier to entry as a four-wheel fully homologated street legal vehicle is significant… such that very few new manufacturers survive the first 10 years of business,” he told Utah Business. A vehicle built with three wheels, though, qualifies federally as a motorcycle, which spares it the crash-test rules that apply to cars. That single decision shrank both obstacles at once, and it is the reason Vanderhall Motor Works exists as Utah’s sole car manufacturer.
Hall spent about five years on three-wheeled prototypes, working through a series of drivetrain and chassis configurations. The first production model, the Laguna, was introduced to the public in 2015. It was expensive, and sales figures from 2016 showed the company had an “opportunity to appeal to a broader audience if our target starting price could be under $30,000,” Hall recalled, with the largest savings available in manufacturing. Larger automakers used thermal forming for small parts. Vanderhall worked out that thermal forming entire body components would let them “bypass paint as the finished exterior pigment was pre-infused into the carbon composite ABS panels from our supplier before we thermal formed into their final shape.” The Venice followed at $29,950, according to CarBuzz.
Photo Courtesy Vanderhall
For years, none of it could be sold at home. Utah law barred vehicle manufacturers from selling directly to the public, which left Provo-built roadsters unavailable in Provo. Daniel Boyer, Vanderhall’s sales director, told KUER, “We understood that it was not going to be a business model that was going to entice dealers to basically come on board with us. At $50-$77,000 for a toy that has absolutely no utility, but brings a smile to your face when you drive it, it’s a tough sell in the powersports industry.” Beyond deploying the cheaper model, the company bypassed the barrier by partnering with an established Salt Lake City motorcycle dealer to create Vanderhall Salt Lake. “Today is the first time that we’ve been able to work with the dealer franchise law,” marketing director Travis Skeen told KUTV that morning.
Provo suited the work. Hall has pointed to numerous local benefits: “It’s a fantastic place for manufacturing. It offers us close proximity to a wide variety of skilled workers, and there are opportunities to work with Provo City in a designated redevelopment zone. Plus there are business-friendly government relations here, and we’re surrounded by natural landscapes.”
Hall moved to a 20,000-square-foot facility, followed by progressive expansions to 60,000 square feet, then 80,000, then 200,000, and finally approximately 400,000 by the end of 2020. The Daily Herald counted about 50 employees in January 2018. Keith Morey of Provo’s economic development team later told ABC4 that the city’s momentum was “obvious and exciting.”
Photo Courtesy Vanderhall
Innovation has been key at the company. Hall described a lesson from his father, who visited an early Vanderhall facility, saw a row of rejected prototypes lined up against a wall, and told his son to get rid of them. “You cannot look back, or you will not be able to move forward,” Hall recalled him saying. They destroyed the prototypes, Hall said. It angered a number of the engineers, and he has called it “the right thing to do.”
The move to electricity came gradually, and for practical reasons. Vanderhall announced the Edison², a battery-powered version of the Venice, in 2018. The Brawley followed, an enclosed four-wheel off-road machine with a motor at each wheel that the company rates at 404 horsepower and roughly 140 miles of range. “The Brawley offers the freedom to explore trails, scale rocks, and cross open terrain with assurance,” the company wrote. The technology also includes fewer moving parts and reduced maintenance demands. It makes sense that Vanderhall’s current lineup is entirely electric: the Brawley and the three-wheeled Santarosa, now taking reservations as a 2027 model. As the company described, “The move toward electric off-road is undeniable. PHEV and hybrid options are starting to show up as well, but the spotlight is shifting quickly toward full electric.”
The Brawley was a harder build than planned. Vanderhall priced it at $34,950 in December 2021 as a 2022 model, Carscoops reported. Customer deliveries began around October 2025, at $49,950, according to ATV.com. In a release issued from Provo in June 2026, Vanderhall North America, a subsidiary of Vanderhall Motor Works, said it was activating the BOSS 200 (Brawley Ownership Support System) program to support Brawley owners. CEO Kasey Evans said, “Brawley is an ambitious platform, and early customers gave us invaluable feedback. We made a conscious decision to listen first, make improvements, and then build a program that reflects what our customers actually need. BOSS 200 is a result of that process.” Simultaneously, after an internal production pause, Vanderhall announced that it is resuming production with new emphasis on quality control, supplier alignment, and internal validation processes. “Confidence is built through actions, not timelines,” Evans stated.
Photo Courtesy Vanderhall
The company still calls what comes out of the Provo plant handcrafted. Hall summarized, “Overall, we want the shape of a Vanderhall to embody a nostalgic nod to the motoring and aviation’s golden age—a time so glamorized and romanticized that just hopping in one of our roadsters mentality takes you back. It takes mundane tasks of running errands and turns them into adventures in their own right. It rekindles imaginative fantasies that fully grown, even mature adults find themselves drifting into on their way to pick up a gallon of milk. It reignites adolescent daydreaming and the joys of defining the mood of your day with the thoughts inside your head.”
