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Dear kit car/replicar enthusiast:
We published the 1st Edition
of our Kit Car Guide in 1983, which we advertised heavily
in the kit car magazines.
“What difference did
it make whether you got your kit car information from a monthly
magazine or from our Kit Car Buyer's Guide?” you might
ask.
It made a lot of difference.
From the Get-Go we provided
you with honest information and honest feedback, with no tolerance
for the industry's telemarketers (I call ’em “telepredators”)
and incompetent producers. If we received serious complaints about
a given manufacturer and then determined that said manufacturer's
product and/or business practices were less than honorable, we didn't
hesitate to let you know.
Put another way: without
issuing a specific "Kit Car Seal of Approval,"
just the same we did our best to make sure that every kit manufacturer
featured in our Buyer's Guide was reputable and worthy of being
included. When a given manufacturer's business practices and/or
product quality proved otherwise, we promptly yanked that manufacturer
out.
How does that policy compare
to that of the kit car and street rod magazines? I mean, couldn't
you as a consumer rely upon the ads (and the glowing articles) you
read in their pages? Wouldn't they expel any advertiser who was
generating serious complaints? Sigh. Here's a link to a page on
KitCar that answers that question... it's a commentary I penned
several years ago, and which is more on-the-mark today than
it was when I wrote it. It's titled "Predators
and Editors." Do yourself a big favor: read it and heed
it.
And when you see the "kit
car buyer's guide" section featured occasionally in the back
of those magazines, you'll always find the industry's boiler-room
telepredators right there mingled along with the good guys... and
it's up to you to attempt to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Of all the complaints I've received over the years about kit car
and and street rod and Cobra replica manufacturers and their business
practices—especially the Florida telemarketers—almost
precisely 100% of those complaints came from from folks who trusted
what they read in the kit car and street rod magazines... and
didn't bother to pursue the reliable information that was right
there in our buyer's guide(s) all along.
We continue to publish our
"Complete Guide to Cobra Replicas," and we intend
to resume production of our Kit Car Guide. But you must understand
that unlike the enthusiast magazines, we never accept the
advertising of the industry's big-spending telepredators: NEVER.
So when we do come out with our 10th Edition Guide you won't be
able to purchase it for the price of those monthly mags. It's an
expensive endeavor to conduct all that travel and research, and
to obtain high-quality photographs and gather accurate and reliable
information.
Put another way: the
kit car and streetrod periodicals represent for you an inexpensive
investment in information... and the information you rely upon from
them is worth precisely what you paid for it. A lot less, in
fact.
If you wish to see a continuation
of our Kit Car Guide, then email me and share your thoughts with
me, including what you'd like to see included in future editions.
Sincerely,
Curt Scott
Publisher
Crown Publishing Company, Inc.
(661) 251-0806
Curt@KitCar.com
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