Vintage Speedsters of Arizona Experience

Part TWO

While waiting six months for the complete assembly of the speedster.

He kept telling me that he’s waiting for us with amateur it’s in customs coming from Brazil. I called a month later and he says it’s in customs I can’t do anything.

The polish aluminum parts such as bumper guards and handle to the bonnet had black pits. Just poor quality

He tried to convince me that it was black glue.

Part Three

Before taking final delivery I had the car inspected by imports specialist.

They found brake fluid leaking on rear disk and a silicone washer wasn’t settled correctly on push rod. White silicone was visible on only one.

Did you buy this car from a dealer, a manufacturer or and individual?

Who built the car and was it new, used, or what?

Did you have a Pre-Purchase Inspection done on the car?

Shipping by boat was indeed impacted by Covid and now a shortage of workers to unload and I suspect same for the port customs  inspections.  Think it was Carey that pointed out that aluminum cast parts were not quality they used to be.  Said he had to buy numerous bumper overriders to find good ones with out pin holes in surface.  You can remove them and have them polished -- or DIY.  It takes lots of time and elbo grease to wet sand the aluminum and then use jeweler's rouge to buff it to a chrome like finish.  Even then there may be visible pin holes.

His car came from Vintage Speedsters in Arizona.  It's one of the cars built?/sold by them after Vintage Speedsters was sold in 2018 and the California employees were all fired and the company was moved to Scottsdale, Arizona.  This was all before the pandemic.

JPC has posted on here several times in the past couple of years, but this is the first time I've heard that they may have imported the car from Brazil.

To be fair, the company may have changed hands since this car was built.  It's unclear if the original buyer Justin is still involved (possibly in the background) or if Matt is now the actual new owner.

And just to be clear, Vintage Motorcars of California is a completely different company with no connection to the Vintage Speedsters company that JPC is posting about in this thread.

Part Four

I was not clear about the Brazil connection. Justin , Who first owner vintage Arizona and bought the name from Kirk,for months and months kept saying that the speedometer was in customs which is a little interesting idea..

Once again to save money he had to have a mechanical speedometer. And I asked him why a mechanical speedometer. He came up with the idea that it is legal in all municipalities. I’m sure somewhere somehow there might be some truth to this but the bottom line is he wanted to save money once again. So I have , like a lot of the old mechanical speedometers , it jumps And is pretty accurate but back and everybody else I think use electronic speedometers

PART FIVE

The roof that they fabricated Appears from a distance like a roof , but if you look closer it is the cheapest constructed Roof I’ve ever seen. I’m glad I’m in Arizona and I really took off the roof since It rains so little and the one time I was caught in a little bit of rain it was like driving a motorcycle in the rain.

To clarify I bought the car after seeing it at BARRETT JACKSON and I was excited that it was being manufactured in assembled five blocks away IN SCOTTSDALE.. I was not aware of S.O.C.

JUSTIN Has been a car salesman his whole life and does not have the mechanical background like GREG L. California Vintage. He’s sold it to Matt and Matt was very good about cleaning up some of the messes.  But his attitude about taking shortcuts really bugs me and I wanna try to prevent other people from getting stuck the way I got stuck.

MATT T  is from Minneapolis and his expertise has been restoring antique farm tractors which some sell for over $200,000.  So it sounds like overnight he became a Speedster newbie.

But his attitude about taking shortcuts to save money  really bugs me and I wanna try to prevent other people from getting stuck the way I got stuck. I bought a shiny car that I thought I was going to drive every day.

No pictures of the roof.

@Troy Sloan posted:

His car came from Vintage Speedsters in Arizona.  It's one of the cars built?/sold by them after Vintage Speedsters was sold in 2018 and the California employees were all fired and the company was moved to Scottsdale, Arizona.  This was all before the pandemic.

JPC has posted on here several times in the past couple of years, but this is the first time I've heard that they may have imported the car from Brazil.

To be fair, the company may have changed hands since this car was built.  It's unclear if the original buyer Justin is still involved (possibly in the background) or if Matt is now the actual new owner.

And just to be clear, Vintage Motorcars of California is a completely different company with no connection to the Vintage Speedsters company that JPC is posting about in this thread.

Thanks for the clarification....

We've heard this song and dance before so I have idea why we're all of a sudden hiring about it again in a 20 part format.

@Robert M posted:

We've heard this song and dance before so I have idea why we're all of a sudden hiring about it again in a 20 part format.

Ditto. I think people get the point.

A lot of people just buy by price point.  Others make impulse buys.  Ya learn by those mistakes.

Another thing is that some folks just don't know about this forum before they jump into a purchase. We forget how esoteric the info we regular participants see is in the real world.

When the madness strikes sometimes you can't wait. I remember a guy who brought home a speedster that had sat outside near the beach for 14 years...

I get that a lot of us have seen his posts previously and are tired of them, but there are also a lot of new potential owners who haven't and will appreciate the information.  I say let him post and just ignore him if you're tired of him like I am.

There is a very nice retired Surgeon, Perry, who put  50% down, on an new Arizona Vintage
Speedster. Strange thing is that he lives in San Francisco. I told him about the quality difference between Hawaiian Gardens, CALIFORNIA SPEEDSTER and Scottsdale Speedsters  I spoke to him for 30 minutes about the problems I have had  

He has been following SOC for several years, but is having it shipped when done ?...from Az to CA.  Why he doesn’t buy from GREG S🤔

PART SIX

When you spent $35,000 on a car is it asking too much to have a schematic of the fuses. Just another shortcut or I don’t give a damn that some people that assemble these things don’t follow through with.

Is it asking too much to have a fuse schematic. 🤔🤔🤔🤑🤑🤑🤑

Just stop.

@Panhandle Bob posted:

Just stop.

Only 14 more parts to go Bob.

To quote Michael Cane in "Cider House Rules":

"Got an issue, need a tissue?"

Let’s skip ahead.

PART TWENTY

You sell your Vintage Speedster of Arizona and probably get a pretty good price for it given the current market. You then buy a different Speedster replica or a different car altogether. Maybe even a completely different toy; one that will actually make you happy, because life is too short to live unhappy.

@TwinCitiesSpeedster posted:

Let’s skip ahead.

PART TWENTY

You sell your Vintage Speedster of Arizona and probably get a pretty good price for it given the current market. You then buy a different Speedster replica or a different car altogether. Maybe even a completely different toy; one that will actually make you happy, because life is too short to live unhappy.

I feel a block coming on.

@TwinCitiesSpeedster posted:

Let’s skip ahead.

PART TWENTY

You sell your Vintage Speedster of Arizona and probably get a pretty good price for it given the current market. You then buy a different Speedster replica or a different car altogether. Maybe even a completely different toy; one that will actually make you happy, because life is too short to live unhappy.

I feel your pain, @JPC - I really do, because I lived it about 10 years ago with my JPS.

... but the thing is, griping doesn't solve anything. It isn't going to make you any happier, it isn't going to fix your car, and it isn't going to make the experience any better. TwinCitiesSpeedster has some good advice here. Short-circuit the anxiety.

It's time for a cold eye. Look at your car with as little passion as possible, as if you are a potential buyer, not as a jilted lover. Can it be fixed, or are the problems baked in the cake. Can you own this car without being reminded every time you see it how disappointed you were with the purchase?

If you can't/won't ever love it, sell it and get what you want. If what is wrong can be fixed, then get it fixed and start enjoying it. I ended up selling my JPS at a loss, and then getting what I really wanted to start with.

Life's too short to live in between.

Thanks

But I feel

Right the unrightable wrong

I love my car now

I don’t think there will be too many more surprises






On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 10:06 PM SpeedsterOwners.com <alerts@crowdstack.com>
wrote:

OK Don Quixote, you've made your point and no one here can change the situation for you. I'm certain, like Stan, we all have sympathy for you, but move on for crying out loud.

To quote the bard of Stanistan: "You don't always get what you paid for, but you paid for what you got."

Again

Only posting these issues so no newbies thinking about a Speedster from SCOTTDALE be warned

I know a lady that bought a Lincoln Navigator.  It was a nightmare from the beginning, with electronic transmission issues.  Corporate Lincoln finally took the car back, not the dealer, after trying to fix it 3 or 4 times.   Newbie buyers beware of Lincolns.  Man, just get over the grudge and let it go.

Blocked. 

No whine with my time on the site.

@JPC posted:

Again

Only posting these issues so no newbies thinking about a Speedster from SCOTTDALE be warned

Everything, and I mean everything, ever posted on here can be found with a search so there's no need to repeat the story every other month.

When someone on here asks about Vintage Scottsdale, or ANY other builder, we tell them the same thing, "Do a search of the site." What you've written about, endlessly, is here on the internet forever.

I search deep into the old posts and learn all kinds of history of how the cars have been updated.

I get frustrated sometimes,especially  on the Spyderclub site, when the posts sre so old the images are not seen.

I guess from bad or outdated links

Some of us used to post photos hosted from Photobucket.  It made a lot of sense, because you included a link and it would be served up on another site, like spyderclub, while saving storage space on that site.  
That worked great until Photobucket decided to start charging for anyone who wasn’t you, specifically, to see your photos.  That included all 3’rd party sites, like this.  
BLAM!
Hundreds of thousands of old photos were now off limits, leaving so many sites as you’ve seen on spyderclub, the Samba, VW Vortex and many, many others.

... and now, nobody uses photobucket for anything.

Given the similarities of the two names (Vintage Speedsters and Vintage Motorcars), I think it's important to detail the difference between the two.  Yes, I am aware those of us who frequent SOC understand Greg's Vintage Motorcars is leagues above Vintage Speedsters (if that's even fair to say).  But, it appears as though some are still getting caught in the trap....especially when Vintage Speedsters actively markets they've built 3,300+ speedsters and have been established since 1988.  

Even Troy had to assist/educate me a year or two back.....as I wasn't exactly clear.

As we've seen from a number of our members, Kirk had some "less than stellar" speedsters leave his facility.  I honestly cannot say if JPC's situation is the exception or the norm that is being cranked out in AZ.  It appears the gentleman that did up the James Dean tribute speedster had a much different experience than JPC.  

It's great that we have a number of choices when it comes to builders.  I'd hope that prospective buyers would do their due diligence in researching these builders prior to plunking down the $35k+ on a new build, but we know that is not the case, as buyers often get caught up in the romanticism of speedster ownership.

@Stan Galat posted:

... and now, nobody uses photobucket for anything.

On my website, I encourage everyone to host their pictures on it.  I only had one guy who insisted on using photobucket, he thought is was better. When photobucket pulled the plug and we lost all his linked photos, I gave him a choice, go back and edit his posts and host them on my site or I would delete all his posts.  He spent several days editing posts.

@Gordon Nichols on spyderclub.com, the reason everyone hosted photos elsewhere was the file size requirements were SMALL. I think they had to be 450 x 600 pixels or less, and sometimes still wouldn't post after resizing them smaller and smaller.

It may surprise people, but it takes a LOT of disk storage space to store photos (2 - 5 megabytes (MB) each) or videos.  Take a normal, 1-1/2 hour movie:  as an old VCR tape it wold be about 900 MB.  Same movie as an HD would be about 3 Gigabytes (GB) and bump that up to 4K resolution and it jumps to a little less than 6GB PER MOVIE!  Those car videos that MUSBJIM and I do?  About 1.5 GB each.  (I know this because for 15 years, disk storage was my life).

Multiply that by lots of users posting photos and video and you can see that the storage requirements are enormous and expensive.  Even with the cost of storage plummeting over the years as more data is crammed onto the same physical platters, it's still expensive.  Youtube, as just one example, is adding the equivalent in storage of an average University library every day (1 terabyte or 1000 gigabytes).  20 years ago, that would have been around $1 million bucks, but today it's more like $500 bucks.  That's how much storage costs have plummeted.

If you can leave the media where-ever it is stored and just serve it up from there on another site with just a link, it helps sites like this a LOT in saved resources.  That's how we link Youtube videos on here so the SOC server doesn't have to have tons more storage.  Still, at the current rate of storage usage by social media and everything else, it's a wonderful time to be in the storage business.

@DannyP , I see that SpyderClub.com is run on phpbb, which is similar to Smf, which is the software I use to run my forum.  There should be an administrative setting to change file size.  In the past, photo sizes were kept small because of download speeds.  Now that everyone has broadband internet, this is no longer a concern.

Facebook has a similar setting.  If you load a video (any size) at 720P or higher, they bump it down to half that and store that.  Same for a lot of higher res photos.  That's why a lot of stuff on FB looks fuzzy.  I would imagine other sites do similar compression to save space.  It's kind of like MP3 for audio - It's not as good sounding as full bandwidth audio, but if you're playing it on your ear buds or from an Alexa Echo you'll never notice a difference.  You just want to be able to sing along with it.

I see what you did there Mr. Nichols...;p