Quote:
Originally Posted by ericr
in those earlier days, though, wasn't there a kind of inverse relationship in that repro parts were junkier but there were more NOS parts available?
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Yes the NOS stuff was still available however fewer in between ...and at a much higher price. In the instance of Tommy Trayler, he got his start by scavenging NOS parts from small TX Ford dealers and from aftermarket parts stores (Western Auto, etc.). His grandparents had empty dairy barns that he filled with parts. Tommy's downfall IMO was he really didn't know Model-As like Marco and different ones who have researched design changes. When Tommy would have something 're-made', he would find a part (often a NORS item) and send it down to Argentina (the back then version of Taiwan) to have THEM reverse engineer it. :O This became Specialized Auto which later became affiliated with MACs when they bought Tommy's tooling & parts and started offering the same parts as he had been making. Based on my own experiences, I believe MACs is still using some of that tooling to make parts!!
Now to bring this back to a positive spin, I realize that many here do not see the direct benefit that Fine-point Judging has/had on the hobby, but I believe it is directly through the efforts of Marco, Doug Clayton, and a super large list of people who have studied prints and releases tirelessly to establish a timeline and to document what the vehicle was originally. Their work has also been published not only in the Judging Stds & Restoration Guidelines but in both club's mags. and some websites. This has educated the hobbyist (albeit sometimes subliminally) where they demanded better quality. When there is a market, folks like Steve Becker, Don Snyder, Walt Bratton, and others have done their best to produce a much more authentic item to fit the need. I guess everything has to start somewhere and build on that. Therefore maybe we needed Rick's and Specialized back in the day to start supplying where we could grown on making it better. I know that I recently had the opportunity to work on a car that I restored back about 14 years ago, and throughout the entire vehicle I kept seeing little details that I couldn't believe I/we did like that back then. Now some 50 Model-As later, we have learned to be better so I guess that is a step in the right direction.
