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– In the driver’s seat. In the 117-year history of the mass-produced automobile, there’s never been a car company both founded and led by a woman. Men’s names—Ford, Ferrari, Chrysler—became the iconic brands that dominate the category.
Out on Long Island, Kristie D’Ambrosio-Correll is building the first automotive business both founded and led by a female CEO. (Of course, it’s not the first to be led by a female CEO, with GM chief Mary Barra an icon of the auto industry.) D’Ambrosio-Correll, 37, is the founder of Dacora, an ultra-luxury electric vehicle that will sell for between $500,000 and $650,000 starting in 2028. And it’s named for her—a shortened version of the last name she and her husband, Dacora’s CTO Eric D’Ambrosio-Correll, share.
In person, the car is striking. So far, there’s one prototype which D’Ambrosio-Correll recently had on display parked outside the Waverly Inn in Manhattan. It’s 20 feet long, and D’Ambrosio-Correll describes the vision as “America’s Rolls Royce.” She grew up fascinated by cars and remembers asking her father what the American ultra-luxury automobile was—and being disappointed there wasn’t an equivalent. She pursued a path as a computer and electrical engineer—and was the CTO of Mirror, the at-home fitness company that sold to Lululemon for $500 million in 2020. The experience taught her about building a high-value product that’s integrated into a customer’s physical, everyday world.
Dacora is catering to an ultra-wealthy clientele, one that may not even be driving (or be driven in) an equivalent car today. The customer is often someone who has built or sold a company, whose work blends fully into their life, D’Ambrosio-Correll says. The customer is eager for privacy and disconnection—the car has no screens inside, beyond a disappearing navigation platform. The car is electric partly because that’s the quietest engine. The buyer doesn’t want voice control or other modern features. “They’re not happy with what’s on the market,” she says. “They’ve gone downmarket.”
Dacora is not building its own power train, and is building the model on top of an existing EV power base. “It’s kind of an old school model that used to be done back in the ’20s and ’30s,” D’Ambrosio-Correll explains. That helps this not to be a “money pit” of an endeavor, she says. The company also won’t hold inventory, and will build vehicles commissioned for clients at a factory/atelier in Hudson, New York. The CEO expects to turn a profit in Dacora’s second year of production and expand to global markets—especially the Middle East and Europe—after that.
Kristie D’Ambrosio-Correll, founder of Dacora. While the ultra-luxury automotive market may seem to be dominated by men, D’Ambrosio-Correll is eager to build for a female clientele too. At 4-foot-9, she’s well aware of the challenges that arise when cars are not designed for women. “Not only are cars designed by companies that are led by men, they’re marketed as if women only care about the safety of their families—which, of course we do, but that’s not the only thing we care about,” she says.
D’Ambrosio-Correll specifically sought out female investors to back her vision. Anu Duggal of Female Founders Fund invested when the idea was just a drawing on a sheet of paper, as one of her first forays into big-tech hardware. Jesse Draper’s Halogen Ventures is a backer, too; many waitlisted clientele are angel investors.
D’Ambrosio-Correll hopes that Dacora lasts as long as the world’s most iconic auto brands. “Hopefully, this will be our family legacy for a long time,” she says.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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