Introduction by Charles--Continued
IV
manufacturers such as Girling, Borg & Beck, and Lucas, but virtually all of
these companies have been bought and sold and bought and sold again so many
times that current employees hardly realize that their companies once
manufactured parts for Triumph and MG sports cars. Workers who might
remember those times have long since retired.
Customers have changed too since the 1980's. Few customers use their
cars now for daily transportation, but many have come to value TR250 and
TR6 sports cars for what is special about them, and car values have escalated
dramatically Most customers want the best parts, and they wish to improve the
quality and performance of their cars. With very few original parts remaining
available, The Roadster Factory has changed too, from a company that buys
parts from the original manufacturer to a company that manufactures and looks
for parts sources worldwide. As original parts have become unavailable,
aftermarket suppliers have picked up the slack, some much better than others
from a quality standpoint. Sometimes the same part number is reproduced by
several different manufacturers. Often, therefore, there are both high and low
quality versions of the same part available, and it is difficult to know which is
better from the price or from the manufacturer's claims. The Roadster Factory
has always accepted the mission of offering only the best components on the
market to our customers, and we constantly buy in samples of parts from many
venders to compare quality.
As The Roadster Factory becomes more and more of a manufacturer in its
own right, we learn more and more about how the cars were made, and because
they were made very much by hand by the men and women working in English
factories, we come to realize that the cars are works of art in a very special
way, no car being quite the same as another, their designs being the products of
human minds unaided by the robots and computers of high technology.
Products of the human hand and mind have more character, most of us will
agree, than the high-tech vehicles of the new millennium. For instance, TR250
and TR6 seats were hand sewn, brackets were stick-welded to the chassis
frame, and body panels were pounded with hammers to make them fit. Every
car is different, every car is the product of hundreds of human hands, every car
has flaws, every car has character. AND EVERY CAR HAS MAGIC...
This writer and others on the staff of The Roadster Factory have spent the
productive years of our adult lives finding and making parts, learning all there
is to know about how cars were designed and built in England more than thirty
years ago, writing catalogues to list parts and to aid customers in building their
own cars, working on our own cars and on customers cars. Working hard and
long, staying up all night, working seven days in a row, working fifteen days in
a row. Working, learning, struggling, losing ground, gaining ground. All of
this effort has not been wasted, I think, as we have built an ethic around the
