Maine-ly Classics

[flth20]

By chance I found a post on this site asking what happpened to Maine-ly Classics. As one of the owners and Tony's business partner and long time friend I thought I would post a brief history of Maine-ly Classics and where we are now.

Not that anyone will necessarily read this 2 years after the original post but, given that Tony and I were partners in Maine-ly Classics for about 5 years, I thought I would set the record straight. Tony started Maine-ly Classics in the mid-80s working out of his garage in Biddeford, ME. He started by building an MG-TD kit for himself and the business, Maine-ly Classics, grew out of that first kit. Tony built exclusively Classic Roadsters kits. Not knowing that Tony and MC existed, I bought the first fully assembled Sebring MX that Classic Roadsters built. Havng owned an origignal 1967 Austin-Healey 3000 I loved the Sebring as soon as I saw it. I flew out to Fargo in February 1989 to pick it up and drove it straight through to Boston through rain, snow and ice. Mike (can't remember his last name) the sales manager at CR at the time gave me Tony's name and address and I went up to see him. We struck up a friendship immediately and about a year or so later, I joined him as co-owner of a holding company that traded as Maine-ly Classics. Tony and I enjoyed an overall good relationship with CR and visited the factory in Fargo numerous times, at least once per year. Overall, we had a good relationship with Gary Rutherford. When CR went bankrupt, we did NOT take over anything, were never officially affiliated with CR and were never threatened with any lawsuits. We had developed suppliers for nearly all the CR Cobra parts, including bodys, frames, side pipes, interiors, etc and spent a significant amount of our own time and money to ensure a supply of parts was available to those CR Cobra kit customers who had purchased kits and had not completed them. Maine-ly Classics also took in dozens of partially completed kits and finished them for the owners. At our peak we had 9000 sq-ft of showroom and shops in the Biddeford Industrial Park, just off Rt 95 in Biddeford, ME. We built several hundred cars in our 5 or so years together, mostly Cobras and Sebrings but also some of every kit CR made. Maine-ly Classics was, and to my knowledge, still is the only company in Maine ever licensed to build new automobiles and issue VINs. Yes, MC was authorized by the State of Maine to issue a fully legal 17 digit VIN with each new Cobra we built back in the early 90s. We did not "pack up and basically disappear." By the mid-90s we had enjoyed a good run in the kit car industry but Tony wanted to move south to warmer weather and I wanted to go back into the business I had before Tony and I hooked up so we closed up the company, sold the remaining inventory and tooling, turned back all our unused VINs to the State of Maine and that was it. Tony and I remain the best of friends to this date and we are proud of what we accomplished with MC. It was a fun and exciting time for both of us and we have only good memories. I've moved on again and now live in Johannesburg, South Africa and I see Cobras on the roads regularly here. I still love seeing Cobra replicas on the road today and am pleased that there are still some very dedicated builders out there living the dream that we also lived of having a business based on something you absolutely love doing. I hope everyone out there still involved with Cobras, whether an owner or builder, enjoys their Cobra as much as we enjoyed our time at Maine-ly Classics. Best wishes to all. Ken