Marcos Maniacs

Hello Dave,
   Mine is LHD. I don't have any idea about the rest of the cars, and I'm
really curious myself. All of the cars that were mentioned at the dealer in
LA and a couple of other locations in the history were also LHD. Who knows
what might have been had my car been trouble-free on arrival...
Dano

 -----Original Message-----
From: 	David Skora [mailto:David@...] 
Sent:	Tuesday, January 22, 2002 11:19 AM
To:	MarcosManiacs@yahoogroups.com
Subject:	RE: [MarcosManiacs] More historical tidbits - a bit long

Hello Dan
Thanks for the interesting history. This is almost more than what is
currently available in print about Marcos cars! Is your car left hand drive?
My car (5006) is LHD. Do you have any idea how many Marcos were left hand
drive? Were all the Triumph or Volvo 6-cyl. cars also LHD?
Thanks Dave

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Dan Orie [SMTP:dorie@...]
> Sent:	Tuesday, January 22, 2002 6:02 AM
> To:	'MarcosManiacs@yahoogroups.com'
> Subject:	[MarcosManiacs] More historical tidbits - a bit long
> 
> Hello All;
>   I had a chance over the weekend to really pour over the documents from
> my
> build history ordered from Rory. Some of it may be common knowledge, but
> it's new to me since I haven't read much of the information available
> about
> our cars - I hope it's not boring.
> 
> Prestige imports of Los Angeles CA. seemed to be the first authorized
> dealer
> of completed cars in the USA. The biggest problem at the time (summer &
> fall
> of 1969) was getting the Marcos to comply with smog regulations. They
> pre-sold over 200 cars, but couldn't sell one due to this fact. They were
> almost in a panic to get the cars certified by the EPA before customs sent
> them back to the UK, and seemed distressed to find out that Volvo engines
> were taking the place of the Fords - maybe they were tied to Ford somehow?
> 
> My car as I mentioned earlier, was ordered by the President of Ford at the
> time. The car was first delivered to a company called Kar Kraft, who at
> the
> time was a performance and tuning specialist working with Ford. Kar Kraft
> was responsible for all of the work in changing regular Mustangs into the
> 'Boss 429 Mustangs'. 'Boss' was how the workers of that project referred
> to
> the President of Ford at the time and the name stuck. It is my speculation
> that having Kar Kraft initially work on the Marcos to comply with the USA
> regulations at the time could have been an informal test and first step to
> an eventual selling agreement in the USA by Ford.
> 
> There was considerable frustration on the part of the guy from Kar Kraft
> in
> charge of getting my Marcos road-worthy. The correspondence between him
> and
> a couple of Marcos employees - including Jem Marsh was almost comical at
> times. Evidently, my car arrived with 'bad engine bearings'. Some thought
> it
> was due to overheating, but Marcos claimed that it was due to 'oil
> surging'
> which was purported to be a problem with almost 20 percent of all of the
> Essex engines. The Reliants and TVR's along with the Ford's were claimed
> to
> be experiencing the same problems. A bigger radiator along with a new
> engine
> was ordered for my car.
> 
> Also, it seems that someone from Marcos (I'm almost positive is was Jem)
> was
> trying to get Kar Kraft to be a Marcos distributor for the central and
> east
> regions of the USA. He claimed that they really didn't have any interest
> in
> selling the Marcos in the UK, and told them that a new factory was being
> built and they could produce around 350 cars per year. Kar Kraft claimed
> that the Marcos attracted considerable interest from the public just
> sitting
> on the trailer. Kar Kraft was almost being begged by Prestige imports and
> by
> Marcos to provide engineering in helping Marcos pass the emissions tests.
> 
> In summation, I don't know if the President of Ford got to drive my Marcos
> before he was fired in 1970. However, the considerable problems he
> experienced with the car probably soured him on ever thinking of
> officially
> importing the cars as part of Ford - if he were thinking along those
> lines.
> The correspondence between Ford USA and Marcos on my cars indicates that
> there was some confusion as to who was doing what at Marcos.
> 
> Dano
> Essex V6 3M/5463
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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