In a message dated 6/22/2003 12:57:33 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
vafred@erols.com writes:
> Terry, there are over 600,000 model "A" Ford's on the road restored today,
> these "A" owners are very grateful to the Ford Motor company for being
> involved to this extent in their 80 year old products and keeping them on
> the road safe with the very best tested parts available today, we in the T/R
> field have in this country 3 major suppliers of parts, they are not sure
> what they are buying from time to time on any given part, they have a
> factory supposedly in the know, we are the test market/proving ground for
> the distributor, a few complaints makes no difference to them after all you
> installed the part and who says you know what you are doing, they buy 1,00
> dist. caps and get 3 complaints, think they're going to throw 997 away, heck
> no, we would all be better off adopting this proven method that is working
> for 600,000 owners, guess who owns "Gaydon" now ??" If you said Ford you are
> right.. "FT"
>
>
Gentlemen, I thought I'd wade in here, although perhaps I have
more of a question than comment. It was my understanding the
parts reproduction business associated with Gaydon was sold by
BMW several years back to a private concern. I believe much if
not all the machine tooling used to make parts (predominately
body parts) for a variety of British cars went with the sale, and
these parts are now being offered to selected vendors around
the world. There are perhaps many gaps to this story, but I think it
would be extraordinarily difficult at best for any entity to reacquire
the tooling. I might suggest that some of this tooling has been lost
forever and would be too costly to reproduce for limited production
runs of parts. Frankly, I am grateful that we have as strong as
support as we do for these vehicles from the many parts vendors
located worldwide. One of the profound pleasures I have from this
hobby is trying to locate parts for various cars. It gives one the
chance to meet and talk with many interesting people, and it
provides a nice diversion from the toils of everyday life.
Best Regards,
Percy Ballentine
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