SAS pictures

As some of you know, Hoss and I visited Steve lawing at SAS as part of my extended Tail of the Dragon weekend. Here are a few pictures of Nolan Scott's car, along with a few others. I saw only two painted bodies (Nolan's and a fellow whose name I think is Hunnicutt), but there were quite a few unpainted bodies outside curing. There were also quite a few chassis. Nolan's chassis was under another body while it was being assembled. I believe that body is used for fitment purposes so that the final one won't be damaged.

Here are a few more. Steve was an excellent host, and I got the feeling that he is serious about putting out a good product.

Thanks for the pics, Lane. I had kept the faith for the past 3 years waiting for days like this. So much for all the Nay Saying in the past. SAS is a viable and honest outfit. For 2 guys building cars like this is testimony to Steve Lawling and Tom's integrity. For the guys looking for a coupe or convertible that rates among the best and don't mind waiting, keep SAS in mind. My car is number 11 subi-powered 356 built since 2004. Another Speedster is lined up for completion before year's end.


PS: SAS Coupes don't leak!

Speaking of SAS coupes. Here are a couple of photos of the SAS coupe doing the Tail of the Dragon in the Great Smokies on October 11.

So, Charles!

Two Questions: You have enough light out front with those H4's and Flame Throwers? You must light up half the World when they're all lit!!!

Secondly, What were your driving impressions when motoring through the twisties on the various Dragon stages?

Thanks, gn

Well Gordon, when you don

Charles,
Absolutely gorgeous car. I think the wide-body coupe is even better looking than the speedster version. Great job of wheel selection and personal touches. The ultimate outlaw. Congrats.

Charles - those are awesome pics of your car in action! I like the aggressive look of a coupe with tastefully flared fenders. ALso, your choice of wheels really compliments the car's character!!

Dale Bates is driving my favorite Speedy, you are driving my favorite coupe!

Peace - Out!

Here's my favorite picture of Charles' car. This is at the Tapoca lodge where we ate after slaying the Dragon.

Yeah, if I had any control over the making of my Speedster body (which I didn't) I would have gone for the flared-rear, stock front fender look. I just think it's cool.



Thanks for the impressions, Charles...I had forgotten you had an automatic, and you're comment about it being a GT car is right on the money.

Glad you're both enjoying the heck out of it!!

Oh, and I'm running the same kind of front bumpers as you!!

gn

Tapoco Lodge was out of their blue plate special, filet of dragon tail. I had to settle for a burger instead.

Yea, here's the latest on my SAS Cabriolet. Starting to materialize! Engine, transmission and A/C are in and are running. Road tests schedule for next week. IT'S ALIVE!!!!

Great looking coupe Charles. The idea of a tastefully done outlaw look coupe with smooth Subie power and a climate controlled cabin is real appealing. I hope to see your car and meet you at the 2009 Smokie event. Nolan, it is good to see some progress and it seems that the ball is rolling along pretty well at SAS! Keep us posted on the developments, you deserve a nice machine for all your faith and patience.

Charles,

Every shot of that coupe elicits the same word out of my mouth ,"Whoa!!!" No matter what angle that car is shown in, it is truly a thing of stunning beauty. Man that thing is sharp!.Is it my imaginiation , or is it looking better as it ages?

I think the coupe may look better to you because we found some better photographers than I. But, I must admit that in person the Creme Brule coupe is indeed stunning from most angles. SAS is completing its post-delivery analysis and servicing this week. We have added faux louvers to the rear deck and made some minor changes to the axles. There are no codes showning on the OBDII system. I hope to reunite with the coupe on Sunday. We certainly appreciate all of the positive comments concrning the coupe.

Wait, wait, wait, here.......

Remember....Nolan's car is in the home stretch!

NOLAN!!!!

Won't be long, now!!!!!!!!!

who is funding the next completion?

I don't understand.....

Gerd; what are you saying?

Gordon, for some reason, Gerd likes to take shots at SAS. He should stick to being JPS's apologist.

LMAO

No, Gerd isn't taking a shot at SAS...

Actually, now that I understand the question (a couple of emails helped), he's got a good point and that is this:

Let's say you contract with SAS to build you a car and pay them the up-front money. Since we all know that your car may be out there 24 - 36 months, the money you pay NOW probably goes to complete someone else's car. Later on, when your car finally comes up for assembly, your money was spent long ago so a newer buyer's up-front money goes to complete YOUR car and so forth. That's called cash flow and it can be managed, if you know what you're doing (lots of small companies work this way on a very short term basis). It can also sound like a kind of Pyramid scheme without a lot of imagination.

It can also get away from you if you're not careful, and then you get irate customers who've paid their up-front and subsequent payments and STILL don't have a car. If they call you on it and demand a refund and you don't have the excess in your cash flow to cover them, they can take you to court. THAT can get messy.

THAT's what Gerd was referring to.

Something to think about, isn't it?

On the other hand, SAS customers who have received their cars (and I've seen and touched several) get some of the highest quality 356 replicas out there and seem to be willing to wait a long time for delivery.

Not all SAS customers are willing to wait that long, however, and this scenario could get messy down the road if allowed to continue (or get worse).

gn

Utilizing "Ye old Peter to pay Paul Plan" comes up short causing much customer outrage to say the least.
It's easy to set up short term "floor plan" auto financing as many new, used and salvage dealers do. ~Alan

....In other words, when you rob Peter to pay Paul you only end up with a sore Peter. :)

~WB

thank you Gordon
I too have seen a SAS car and it is handsdown awesome

Just saw a program about the new Ferrari Sacglietti. Takes four years from order to delivery and costs around $400,000. Mmmmmm pyramid system?

Gordon, good explanation of a very real series of events. Now, throw in todays economy and cash flow goes south in a hurry. Ask General Motors how it feels to burn $1 billion A MONTH from cash reserves, when nobody is buying your products!

Wonder how this economy will play out in a few years for the many small assemblers in the replica industry? I suspect many manufacturers will offer some good deals very soon, but will the buyer trust them to be there later for warrenty and future help?

The builders are having the same credit problems as everyone else, and it hurts and slows production.

I only inferred that this can look like a pyramid if you have never been involved with small lot production. I have. You take deposits from people and use it as working capital to run your business as best you can. In Steve's case, that means buying and refurbing Subaru donors, building and prepping the body, building and prepping the frame, a whole host of things. That's what you use your working capital for.

Perhaps you saw the pictures that Lane took of the SAS production; Several Subarus, cabriolet and coupe bodies all waiting outside, a few frames (some with mated engines) waiting inside and a few more cars in various stages of build - all that takes working capital to make happen.

SAS' real problem stems from having a 2-man shop, not being able to find and retain competent mechanical/technical help in his geographic market to grow his work force, and then being saddled with a whole bunch of early orders when he was still developing his basic car. That development is now done, and he has his build time down to 45 days or less per car after a car's order comes up for build, but he STILL has a huge backlog because people saw his cars, heard the rave reviews of high quality and great after-delivery service and begged him to build their car, too. He tried to discourage them with long lead times, but many persisted (and don't forget - he builds custom hot rods, too) so his order backlog/lead times prior to start of build are still very long. Once he gets going, the build happens pretty quickly, even for a 2-man shop.

He also now has a good support chain of high quality sub-contractors on whom he has off-loaded much of the sub-assembly build so he has slowly turned into a small volume, final assembly shop, rather than a prototype shop, just as several of us have recommended. All good things.

People who see his cars often want one and many are willing to wait for his product. At the SAS Price/quality point, I believe his cars are worth the wait. So do many others.

Hoss and Lane: (and any others wishing to comment...)

This pretty much cover it?

gn

Gordon, you hit the nail on the head. Very clear picture of SAS production and problems. Steve and Tom are really rolling now and his subcontractors have been coming through. Hope to meet you in person soon, Carlisle 2009 maybe?

I think Gordon summarized it well. Like any custom shop there will be some variability in quality, and the inevitable set of sorting issues, but overall it seems he has a excellent product. As I said in the opening post, I believe he is truly committed to delivery a good product for the money.

Thanks, Nolan...

Bringing a product line out of design/prorotype and into some level of production is a delicate balancing act between the ownership company and all of it's sub-contractor suppliers. Change the design too much or to often and you screw them up. Understate your quality goals and they don't live up to expectations. Overstate your quality goals and their cost to build goes way up (along with your product cost). Misjudge your expected volume and you cause a lot of other problems. ALL of this is related to the people pipeline of available, technically qualified resources available to you and your subs and keeping that human resource pipeline filled. That's getting harder all the time.

The biggest thing to avoid is to NOT pre-announce your product line too soon. Too many early orders cause nothing but frustration for everyone. If you have an existing product line about to be replaced by another one but you're relying on the existing line to fund development of the next and word gets out that the new one is coming, it's possible that orders for the existing line stop - bang - making the roll-out of the new stuff far harder, if not impossible. Been there, done that, learned a lot, too.

My life for 30 years was introducing new products, all in the computer biz. Believe me....computers, cars, biomed...introducing them is all the same.

gn

It is interesting that not everyone seems to know that SAS is still in business. When I placed a phone order for a subcription to Kit Car Builder I was told (I am not naming names) that SAS was no longer in business since the arrest. Further I was recommended to contact Thunder Ranch and JPS for a speedster over Vintage and Beck. Sounds like JPS and TR have a good relationship with KCB.I did not comment on this information but I thought it to interesting.

To supplement what my friend Gordon alluded to;

WRT working capital (versus start up cost), in a small business (particularly one with employees other than yourself), it IS possible to take on more business than you can afford to do.

I'm surprised that KCB is making such recommendations. Then again, they are a bit cozy with TR.

Paul:

Yes, it seems that KKB and KC have cozy relationships with whomever pays them advertising money, hence all of those gushy "technical articles" about their favored builders forever running in their mags and hardly ever a letter to the editor reporting trouble with one of their advertisers. Look at how they've gushed over Thunder Ranch and JPS cars, and then we find that Paul Rich and Tom DeWalt bought from them and received terribly sub-standard cars and we all say; WTFIGO??

The only publisher I ever truly listened to was Curt Scott and he's now "retired" from his whistle-blowing gig (may have lost his advertisers, huh?), so I guess it falls to these Blog sites to uncover what's going on and go through several rounds of RFI (Rumor, Folklore and Innuendo) until we get to the truth. That's always difficult with all of the BS being slung around, but good product and good service should ALWAYS be rewarded while poor product and poor service should be highlighted in a effort to educate others, get it improved or avoid that builder in the future.

So....on to what facts I DO know and have confirmed on SAS:

I have never personally heard that Steve Lawing was ever "arrested", nor have I (or anyone else) heard that his business was in financial trouble. That is a Civil Issue and (relying on my three semesters of business law 40 years ago) I don't think you get arrested for civil cases.

I have heard that some hot rod customers took him to court regarding their builds and both SAS and Steve Lawing won in court (neither were at fault).

At any rate, SAS has continued to operate and build high quality cars, still has a backlog which they are working off steadily, and are still shipping to happy customers. Again, Steve Lawing was never "arrested", won his case(s) in court, but still had to pay his court costs and move on, just like everybody else.

There also seems to be a Tubaru Owners web site where some of them hob-nob, so not as much info appears on here anymore.

gn

And why the hell am I the one who has to research all this? I don't even own a Tubaru!!

I think we can say unequivocally that SAS is still in business and producing cars and no, SL does not chose to advertise in the print media or with Curt Scott. He has a website (www.specialtyauto.com) and does advertize on this blog site and as far as I know has never stopped.

Recently, he has delivered the Cr

I saw the pics of the meissen blue Speedster (gorgeous!), but I didn't see any of the Sliver Bullet. Can you point to 'em, Charles.

EDIT: So where is the Tubaru site, Gordo? I can't find it with Google.

The Silver Bullet is on the SAS website under Customer Cars. It belongs to Ed Santana. And we are considering a Water-Cooled Porsche club, our slogan is tentatively "Get Wet".

Nolan - how 'bout 'Wasserpumpen'?

The Silver Bullet is shown below. It is also on the SAS website.

Lane, The SAS Forum is not an open site. The moderator is Bob Rosendale. There are three types of folks on the SAS Forum - owners, folks in the queue, and aficionados. Contact Bob (he is on this blog site) to become a member but I believe approval for participation is by concensus.