Here's the rather impressive entrance to Ck3's... industrial park. The address is 1350 East Flamingo Road, Las Vegas, Nevada.

Here are some of the office suites at 1350 East Flamingo Rd. Presumably, the larger accommodations are the "deluxe suites." Our intrepid photographer knocked on the door of Suite 704 several times, but no one ever answered. Bummer. He was really looking forward to touring the firm's new 18,000 sq.ft. state-of-the-art manufacturing and research facility at this address.

Readers of our kit car and Cobra buyer's guides have long been familiar with our "Golden Rule #8," which includes our admonition that "... as a prospective customer, there is no legitimate excuse for a firm to refuse or resist your request for customer references." Repeat, no excuse. Any business enterprise that has nothing to conceal will promptly and cheerfully. provide you with customer references. In several telephone calls I received from Ck3's Blaine Kennedy in February and March of 1997, I repeatedly and courteously requested that he simply provide me with names of just 2 or 3 customers who have taken delivery of a Ck3 body kit. You see, we've never met or spoken to anyone who has actually received product from this firm, which is a big advertiser in the kit car magazines, as well as (recently) duPont Registry. I've listened patiently to a least a half-dozen different contrived excuses why he won't comply with my request (including "94% of our kits are shipped through large overseas importers, and we're not about to divulge their names," and the pseudo-indignant "We see no reason that we need to prove our honesty"), none of which merits any exemption whatsoever from our admonition that "There is NEVER a legitimate excuse for a business firm to refuse to give you references.' I'll repeat the advice I've provided to our readers many times in the past: If a business enterprise--in any industry--becomes evasive when you request customer references, dash for the nearest exit, and take your business elsewhere.

Yesterday, 23 September, I received an email message from Canada, from someone claiming to have contacted and received a literature package from Ck3, which he said favorably impressed him. He concluded his message with the words "Don't be so hard on Ck3. I don't think they are scammers since they provide such great pictures that show the car being built in Canada at their assembly plant at different stages. Ck3, I beleive (sic) is owned by one of the largest Canadian family owned companies." When I twice attempted to reply to his message, my efforts were thwarted by what was self-evidently a phony email address. Sigh. Curt Scott

Consumer watch, February 1997. This is an admonition for you to "be careful." Ck3 Design advertises with full-page ads in the kit car magazines displaying a lineup of kits that purportedly includes replicas of the Dodge Viper, Mercedes SL500, Testarossa, Corvette Stingray and Koenig Testarossa. The firm's address listed in its ads is: Ck3 Design, 1350 E. Flamingo Rd., Suite 704, Las Vegas, Nevada 89112. When folks telephone them and state that they're interested in purchasing a kit and they'd like to come by to visit the facility, they're told that "Our Las Vegas address is a 'research facility' only, and that the kits are actually produced in Canada, and that no one is allowed to visit the 'research facility.'" That's a remarkable claim, since when we (twice) mailed to them a request for information in early 1996, the first was returned by the USPS as "undeliverable as addressed," and the second was returned by none other than the manager of a "Mail Boxes Etc." location, with the notation that no such addressee maintained a box at that location (Mail Boxes Etc. is a commercial franchise operation in the U.S. and Canada that rents out mail boxes that usually appear to resemble a physical "office suite" address). At the Knott's Berry Farm Kit Car Show. in Buena Park, California in April 1996 I reported this sequence of events to Ck3 Design's Blaine Kennedy, who professed to know nothing at all about any "mail delivery problems"; he further acknowledged that, yes, they do use a Mail Boxes Etc. address, but only temporarily, because "we're constructing a new building and couldn't yet receive mail there." Well, folks, it's about 18 months later, and they're still maintaining the charade to prospective customers that "1350 E. Flamingo Rd. Suite 704, Las Vegas is a 'research facility'." One must wonder just how much research they can manage to conduct inside the confines of a "suite-sounding" P.O. box. Must be a rather lilliputian operation. Sigh. But you can demand an answer to that question yourself: call (toll-free in the U.S. and perhaps Canada): 800-454-7627.

After I posted the above alert, we received email from two motorcar enthusiasts who reported that they sent money to Ck3 to receive their literature package, and never received anything after months of waiting, even after repeated assurances that their literature would be mailed promptly. We also received by fax a copy of the brochure that Ck3 sends out, that refers to the Las Vegas address as a "media relations & sales office as well as a future site of 18,000 sq. ft. state-of-the-art manufacturing facility" (media relations & sales office? I thought it was a research facility!). On Friday 21.February.1997, I was duly advised by the A.H.A. (Association of Handcrafted Automobiles), which sponsors the annual "Knott's Berry Farm Specialty Car Show,". that Ck3 never bothered to pay the $500 bill they ran up with their large display at the 1996 Knott's show, even after the A.H.A. subsequently contacted them by fax and phone, and after the club sent them an invoice by registered mail, which was signed for (and ignored) by the company.

"Dear Curt:

Hello, I purchased your Specialty Cars. guide this weekend... I'm sorry to say but I have more bad news about this company (Ck3). Yesterday I received a postcard from them stating:

'Summer blowout sale while supplies last!!! Complete Rosa kits reduced $5999 to $2999 just in time for summer, This sale will not happen again until summer of '98, so rush your order in today before stock runs out!'

When I followed up with a phone call, I was told that I must rush in my payment immediately to guarantee a kit at this price (sounds real familiar).

On a good note, I commend you for putting together a first-rate publication. Thank you. William Gilgears, Brooklyn, New York"

Thursday, 6 March 1997 we received two more complaints today about Ck3, both of them very serious allegations: One was from a kit car consumer in the U.S. who months ago sent Ck3 $1200 for a set of eurostyled wheels that Ck3 advertised in Kit Car magazine. He says he has never received anything. Another call was from a kit car manufacturer who protested that the "Koenig"-style Testarossa that Ck3 displayed at the 1996 Knott's Berry Farm Show in Buena Park, California was constructed from over $1500 worth of TR-styled body parts that he had shipped to Ck3... and was never paid for and which were never returned to him. He further alleged that Ck3's Blaine Kennedy denied that said body panels were embodied in said Ck3 Testarossa on display. (This manufacturer followed up this call with a typewritten letter which stated in part "I personally along with my staff placed numerous phone calls to (Ck3) hoping to reach Mr...Kennedy, with no results. When I finally did reach him he said he was on his way to a meeting and would return my call immediatley. After a few weeks of this he did tell me that he would send me a check via UPS "Next Day Air." Of course, it still hasn't arrived. When I contacted him after a week had gone by, Kennedy told me that the parts I'd sent were no good and he was returning them... Today is 6 March 1997 and I still haven't received a check (or my parts)." We also were advised by one of the enthusiast magazines that Ck3 hasn't paid its bill in some months, and that as a consequence you are no longer seeing Ck3's ads in its pages.