Alan Chatterton wrote:Kev,
'Asking our committee' for 20 years?
Could you clarify please?
Having served on the board of directors for almost 20 years now, I've not heard of anything like this.
Thank you
Well, as my posting suggests, one can ignore the issue and then say (probably truthfully) that it's not something known to have been raised.
I raised the issue once at a National and whenever I bumped into anyone with connections or who I thought might have had influence. It might even be, and probably is, more than 20 years ago. The reply I always was given was that "Chris Witor looks after parts" and "It's not something we think the club should get involved in". With such negative outlooks I never ever bothered to attend another National (and never will).
Now, I know that one person would not be able to keep on top of this and I've been correct. The Stag Owners Club took a totally different view and clearly knew that factory support would decline quickly and that they - as a club - would need to do something about it. They did so and because they did the SOC is a much stronger entity than the Register (more members even though car production total was underwhelming).
This was all before the internet but now that this medium can reach anyone who wants to be included in the loop, one is able to document issues better and for everyone to know they have been raised and the response to them. The response I got back then, those twenty odd years ago is still happening at committee level if recent posts to the forum indicate. Whenever someone has asked why we do not get involved more in parts re-production it has (from my reading of the posts) been batted away with evey excuse under the sun. Because it is such an important issue we have had a trio of members try to do something more positive on this aspect and another individual do some superb work on part panel (repair) section production. This should have been under the umbrella of the club so that finance, supplier(s), storage and such could be done in a much less ad hoc way.
The SOC spun off a supplier to enable parts to be easily available. This supplier now also stocks bits for cars other than Stags (Spitfire/GT6 etc.) They could have included parts for our models if we had had the nous to negotiate and probably just be involved in raising the finance for the projects/tooling for reproducing the needed parts. It was certainly an easier avenue to achieve an end result if our club did not wish to get involved in raising limited/unlimited companies to provide the services.
Kev
