As usual in Tigerdom, there is less fact than opinion available for general
consumption. To begin with, I want to complement Norm & Company for an
overall very successful event. Breaking new ground in this marque has
always been difficult. He managed to get the special people and historic
Tigers to the event together as he dared to project last year. This was
obviously a logistical and political nightmare which was by all measures a
total success. Kudos for this effort are warranted for Norm, Margi and
several individuals of whom I can identify only a few.
I really had doubts as to Dick Barkers seriousness in putting all of the
pieces of the "LeMans Mule" together particularly after his first attempt
several years ago was such a disaster. Dick, Steve Alcala and Dan Walters
gave efforts far above what could possibly be expected in order to create
this thirty year reunion of LeMans Tigers. Don Whitley acted as liaison
between Norm's Team and STOA. You have no way of knowing (as I do) how
deep his commitment was or the personal and emotional pressures he was
subjected to by historically conflicting factions in our club. There are
several other very involved Tiger fanatics which I am unable to credit due
to my own lack of participatory knowledge. Un-named (by me) they may be in
this document, but they all made significant contributions, and I applaud
them all.
Whether it was either appropriate or desirable for the event attendees to
help underwrite this logistics effort is a separate question. Commercial
sponsorship was sought, but far too late in the planning process to make a
viable contribution to the required funding. If in the future, we
collectively want this kind of International Participation, we'd best be
prepared to seek long term commercial sponsorship and give up some of our
degrees of freedom.
Placing the Concours at the end of the event was bound to cause some bad
vibes, particularly with the trailer crowd, but I personally like it better
that way. It tends to level the playing field particularly when
participants have to enter all moving events prior to the concours.
Also as usual for Norm, almost Everything was done HIS WAY. STOA was a
financial sponsor in a minimum sense, but the club did not participate in
event planning to any measurable extent. This was Norm's event all the way.
As to the Concours itself, I will have to accept a major portion of the
blame for last minute changes. It came to my attention very late in the
game that Norm had planned to judge ALL tigers to his newly developed STOCK
judging sheet that was on the Internet. Unfortunately, the planners had
misunderstood a seemingly minor point in scoring the Lord Rootes Award.
The system STOA and most clubs have used for many years is class-less for
this Top Award. This means that all event scores are entered in order of
absolute value without regard to class. In judging every body to STOCK
standards, the most Modified and Personalized cars would tend to get the
least concour points, regardless of their preparation. This would have
made the concours scoring substantially skewed in favor of the Stock Class
for the Lord Rootes Award. I'm sure that there are several participants
that would be delighted with this circumstance, but it would have been a
major change in our historic recognition of Personalized and Modified
examples of the Marque. I expressed my feelings to Paul Reisentz, the
Event Chairman, and a return to our historic scoring basis was thereafter
effected. I have no knowledge as to why the rotating individual judging
system was used other than time and personnel constraints. Both Bette and
I found many faults with the judging system used, but we bear some level of
responsibility.
Since at any recent TU event only approximately 20 owners are seriously
competing for the Lord Rootes Award, perhaps they should be separately
judged using appropriate class criteria and that could satisfy Jeff's
request for the Masters Class. CAT used a version of this system last year
at Bakersfield. The major problem with this is the inferred designation to
the rest of the participants of second class citizenship. We already have
that problem with owners of conversions. We don't need to make it worse,
but we do need to recognize real time and effort constraints at the event.
We have discussed a more professional level of judging as a possibility for
several years, but applying this criteria and time requirements to 50 or
more cars in a couple of hours is still a solution in search of a viable
technique.
I hope that these thoughts give you a little more insight into the kind of
problems all TU event organizers face, this one in particular.
Without stealing Paul Reisentz's thunder on the STOA TAC program (he will
issue an internet update report next week) we managed to authenticate 15
new Tigers bringing our total to date to 261. In fact we were successful
in adding all but TWO of the Tigers that attended the event, and those
particular owners have been long term objectors to our program.
Tom & Bette Hall
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