CSX700?,
Bob Marsh is as honest as they get. Bob ALWAYS does what he says he is going to do--that is a very rare commodity now days. I have had numerous conversations with Bob over the years and he is truly an outstanding guy. I seriously doubt Bob is passing along ANY misinformation to you.
Bob is currently overloaded. He has more orders than he can fill (I know, I am one of his suppliers) and he is doing the absoloute best he can under the circumstances. We can not predict how many people will want to buy our cars, and neither can Bob. There simply are more phone calls, e-mails, etc that happen in one day than he can respond to. Think about it...if 10 people (on average) want 15 minutes of your time (on average) that's 150 minutes, or 2 1/2 hours. That's a serious chunk of time.
Bob has current customers who have already paid him he has to take care of, and future customers he has to take care of to keep the business running. No future customers, no money; no money, no helping current customers.
I assure you, Bob has personally called me several times with regard to your car. Bob is EXTREMELY interested to keep you happy as a customer. I know, he has told me so on several occasions.
A note on your car:
Original cars:
I am sure you would trade me straight across CSX3104 for your CSX7000 car. That being the case--did you know... The right fender of CSX 3104 fender is 1 1/2 inches WIDER than the left fender? No, it was not in an accident there. That is how it was made. It was made that way because it was made by hand. At Kirkham Motorsports, we do not have very much tooling for our 289 FIA cars. We make all of our 289 FIA cars by hand. As such, they are definately not nearly as symmetrical as our 427 cars. One day we will have that much tooling for the 289 cars. Notwithstanding, we are working hard to make them more and more symmetrical.
We even have an original AC 289 FIA body. When we compared it to our car, we were shocked at how close they were. The apex of the wheel arches are NOT in the center of the wheel and the fenders don't even cover all of the lower tubing! They actually leave 2 inches of the lower mounting tubing hanging out in space...
Today, we use tires which are far bigger than the ones the car was designed to use which only makes the problem worse as we try to stuff huge tires under the car and wonder why they don't fit. It is not uncommon for distances on original cars to be way off from one fender to the next, and one car to the next.
"A week to fix the car."
We have only had your car in our shop now for 2 weeks. It took a week to order the container for your car. Before we ever got the car, Bob asked me how long it would take for me to fix the car...Well, I was trying to figure out your problem on the phone--which had been filtered to me by at least 2 different people about a car that was delivered 3 years ago. If the problem had been similar to others we have had, it would have only taken a week to fix. When I received the car, I realized the car was more "original" than I thought : ) So, I told Bob we needed to ship the car back to Poland to fix it.
After we loaded your car onto the container, we were told by Shelby to take it off as someone was going to send a truck up to pick the car up. So, we unloaded the car. As a consequence, we planned other very expensive, and critical, equipment to go on the container and started loading it in your car's place. Two days later we received notice to put your car back on the container...in a space where your car would no longer fit. We unloaded, rearranged the container, and reloaded your car onto the container...all at our own expense of time, money, and equipment. The container was delayed for several days while all of this rearranging was done. I hope no one else changes their mind--as the container left today.
Your car will take 3 months to fix. It takes 1 1/2 months to ship a container to Poland and 1 1/2 months to send a container back. That means your car will be in our shop for no more than 5 days to do all the repairs! Remember, we sold that car 3 years ago to Shelby. I know of no other manufacturer who would ship a car 1/2 way around the world, stop produciton as soon as your car arrived, and warranty a car that has been out of their control for 3 years. Especially one that was specifically sold "AS IS."
When you receive your car back, you will have a car that looks just like Jenny's car. I have promised you will have a spactacular car, and you will. You have the fortunate timing of returning your car to the factory where all of our cars are now sanded and finished out like Jenny's car. We charge $5500 to sand a car and stripe it like Jenny's. All of this is being done at no cost to you. I am confident you will be happy with your car. I am confident you will be happy with Shelby. I am confident you will be happy with Kirkham when you receive your car.
David
