(FORTUNE Small Business) – As an entrepreneur, Malcolm Bricklin, 65, is best known for his bold failures. He began importing Subaru cars in 1968 but left in 1972 before Subaru's sales ignited. His attempt at manufacturing his own car--the gorgeous, gull-winged Bricklin--failed before even 3,000 were built. And then he brought the notoriously gimpy Yugo to the U.S. in the 1980s. Undaunted, he declared in 2002 that his new company, Zastrava Motor Works, would import a different car from the former Yugoslavia. Luckily for him, it never happened. Now Bricklin tells FSB that his Manhattan-based company, today called Visionary Vehicles, plans to start hawking five models from China's Chery Automobile Co. for 30% less than the price of comparable vehicles. --IAN MOUNT

What happened to Zastrava?

When we formed Zastrava, we went to see a factory in Serbia and realized that the cost to update it would make it impossible. NATO had fired five missiles into it during the war, so it was challenged, to say the least.

Why will the Chery succeed where the Bricklin and Yugo crapped out?

In the Bricklin case I had to build a factory, so I went to a place that would give me money--Canada--not to a place that was good at building cars. In Canada at that time, you could work for three months and go on the dole for a year, so every three months we were getting about 80% turnover. With the Yugo, we took a car that was a 20-year-old Fiat and made 528 changes in 14 months, and color was about the only option we offered. To sell 50,000 of those cars a year for three years was impressive. Then the country imploded.

Did you learn anything from all this?

Don't do business with a factory that can't do as good a job as we can in the U.S. The one in Yugoslavia was built in the 1950s. The difference this time is that we're doing business with a factory that is state of the art. And it's in a country I hope won't blow up.