It seems there is a great deal of misinformation regarding some issues in
this thread. Granted, the ownership tree is very complicated over the last
two decades, so lets hope I get this right.
The Heritage Motor Center at Gaydon is not British Motor Heritage Ltd. BMH
Ltd retains most of the original engineering diagrams and quite a bit of
original tooling. Heritage Motor Center became a part of the Ford Motor
Company because it sits on land that apparently was owned by Land Rover,
Land Rover being the marque that Ford bought from BMW. Heritage Motor
Center houses the individual vehicle production information archive and
quite a bit of historical stuff (vintage rally photos, etc.) for most of the
former British manufacturers.
BMH Ltd., after BMW cast off most of the old British marques, is now
privately held by the management of the company (the management of BMH that
is, i.e. it is now privately held). Leading BMH is David Bishop. Bishop is
the gentleman who tracked down and stored much of the original MGB body
tooling after the factories had been closed.
There is an American organization that was recently established, in the
restoration and parts industry, which caters towards companies involved with
British cars. However, the whole scheme reeks of amateur enthusiasm with
only vaguely defined goals and no real agenda. John Twist of University
Motors, seems to be the one orchestrating the group, aptly named the British
Motor Trade Association. Oddly enough, a few members of this organization
believe that nothing will develop further, but are just along for any
publicity or awareness the group generates for their own business name.
The biggest problem we have with parts is that for many of these parts it is
only economical to produce them in batches of 500, 1000, 5000+. When a lens
goes out of stock at all the big suppliers, Lucas requires a pretty hefty
order before production for another batch can begin. This leaves the big
three companies (Moss, VB, TRF) as the sole means of economic power in the
reproduction of our parts. In addition to order minimums and associated
production costs the greatest expensive for non-available parts is tooling.
Body tooling to produce fresh stampings, if you were going to try and
reproduce the tooling, would run you at least $300,000+ for a fender. We
should consider ourselves lucky that the old tooling was preserved and
maintained! Our Lockheed hydraulics are now produced by the Delphi Group
and I know they require a 2500 batch minimum.
Moss, VB and TRF (to a lesser extent) have the cash and the ability to make
the large quantity purchases. We are stuck with what they specify for
production and what they decide to sell us. Moss has tried to keep certain
things on the market, for instance they purchased the remnants of the
Armstrong lever shock company. Well the new Moss Armstrong lever shocks are
available for some cars, supposedly to OEM specs and design, but I am
hearing that quite a few MGB owners cannot get to the end of their driveway
before there is a puddle of shock fluid already leaking out.
There is pretty much no hope for change within our parts supply situation.
If parts were remanufactured to higher quality specs then some people would
whine about the price. As it is, people whine about the price no matter
what the quality of the component. Remember, we do not drive Ferraris or
1930s Audi racecars, which means not many of us are willing to pay for the
casting of a new engine block whenever we need an engine rebuild. Heck,
some of those nutty vintage exotic-car owners have a new block cast just so
they can remove the original engine and put it in storage for safekeeping!
Kai
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