All,
Man! Oh man! Take off for a few hours, come back and look at all this. All in
one sitting, I'm everything from a godsend to an arrogant asshole. Actually, I
figure I'm something in between. So where do I start?
Normally, I try to stay out of these TAC discussions; I don't have the time,
but more importantly, I believe it is better to have persons not directly
associated with the program making the responses.This I think shows that there
is a broader base of support for the program than if I got up and threw out my
ramblings on a continual basis. I think it's great when Bob Palmer, Frank
Marrone, Steve Laifman, Jan Harde,and countless others make my arguments for
me. But, once in a while someone comes along and makes a statement that is
either incorrect or could be misinterpreted. The latter,I believe, is the case
here. I received 3 postings,two privately and one on the Tiger list from Mr.
Parent, all saying basicly the same thing. All three made the assumption that
Mr. Palmer's statement about "certified experts' implied that TAC inspectors
had looked at MK2 #523 and were now giving out information as to it's identity
as a conversion. Of course these gentlemen should be concerned, this would be
a major change in a long existing policy. Thus, my posting. I tried to make
this clear in my second paragraph, but let me restate it. The only official
STOA Tiger Authentication Committee spokesperson is the TAC Chairman. As the
TAC Chairman and spokesperson, I am not authorized to give out any information
about Alpine conversions discovered at our TAC inspections to anyone including
club members, Norm Miller, club presidents, Tiger listers etc., etc. The only
info given out is for authenticated ( TACed ) Tigers. That's our policy.
Period. Needless to say, all other TAC personnel are not supposed to say
anything about cars inspected. To some, TAC doesn't go far enough; to others,
we've gone to far already. I guess you can't please everyone, so we decided to
take the middle road.
Now, on to this discussion about experts. perhaps the best way to express my
views on this is to start with a short history. When STOA began this program,
they started with a small group of three "core" inspectors, Norm Miller, Tom
Hall, and Mike Andres. All three of which have spent half of their adult lives
in, around and under Sunbeam Tigers. Back then, they had plenty of knowledge
about the differences between Tigers and Alpines and the factory methods used
in assembling these cars. And they when off authenticating Tigers all over the
San Fransisco Bay area. Before long, however, the core group saw the need for
more inspectors if the program was to expand.A training program was soon
established complete with exams to qualify new inspectors. Most all of the new
inspector trainees came to the program with limited background experience with
these cars, but were taught everything they needed to know. As part of this
training though, some of the infomation was and still is withheld just in
case someone decides to speak out and leak information that is crucial to the
long term sucess of the program. At this point I think everyone can see that
the core inspectors had created two classes of inspectors- those that knew all
the known information and those that knew roughly 90%. Then I came along and
pushed the committee to develop an organizational document to cover all the
stuff we kept talking about at all the meetings. At this point we officially
created two rankings of inspectors- regular and senior. All senior inspectors
are privy to all known information/data and we believe have the knowledge to
identify any Alpine conversion. Regular inspectors, we figure would be capable
of picking out about 90% of conversions presented for inspection. About the
time these documents were being developed, Rick McLeod and myself were
elevated to Senior inspector positions, because of our background experience.
Subsequently, Mr. McLeod has resigned for personal reasons, Mr. Miller has
dropped his STOA membership and given up his Senior inspector credentials, but
is still a regular inspector although inactive. More recently, Larry Atkisson
of Seattle, Washington has been granted senior inspector statis as well. This
brings the current number of active Senior inspectors to four with two
retirees.
So, why do I bring all this up? Because I'm going to go out on a limb and call
all six of us "experts". Experts because we all posess all the knownledge
necessary to identify any Alpine conversion no matter how close it is to the
real thing. Regular inspectors I'm not going to call experts, but rather (for
this discussion anyway) "highly knowledgable" of the differences between
Alpines and Tigers and the factory assembly methods and technigues used to
create these cars. And no, none of us has seen MK2 #523. Does this make me am
arrogant asshole?Ya guess so.
Are Jan Harde and Dick Barker experts? I'm not going to touch this one. Are
they highly knowledgable? Most likely. Perhaps. I don't know; it would be news
to me. Look, I'm willing to admit there might be some other authentication
experts out there as I define them, but I don't know of them. If there are
any, I'd like to meet them.As for Jan and Dick, I'm sure that if they think
they are experts, they'll let me know. Maybe I'll be sending out a few exams.
One more point before I put everyone to sleep.Quite often, I read or hear
statements implying that TAC and the registry are the same or at least
connected. They are not. TAC is a STOA program, the registry or TIROST belongs
to Norm Miller. STOA TAC is slowly compiling a list of real Tigers by visual
inspection; the registry is a list of all known Tigers- real or otherwise with
some info collected visually, some by word of mouth, and some inherited by
George Fallahy. I do believe however that the two programs do complement one
another. Norm has on occasion supplied us with VIN numbers to Tigers with
state-assigned ID or no ID at all. In return, we supply him with TAC #'s of
authenticated cars and occasionally corrections to errors in the factory
records. Another point here being that as far as authenticity, TAC records are
more accurate overall because the information is collected first hand by three
inspectors. TIROST on the other hand may have to rely on second or even third
hand information in some instances. In no way am I belittling the registry's
significance to this issue, only noting a slight drawback. All and all, I
think that with both programs in existance, any buyer looking for a real Tiger
should have no problem finding what he want.
And lastly a short note. This last weekend , the TAC inspection team of Larry
Atkisson, Tom Bennett, and Starke Shelby went to Vancouver Island, B.C. to
authenticate Tigers. With the organizational efforts of Mr. Frank Csordas they
managed to add 12 Tigers to the list bringing the current total to 321 TACed
Tigers. I even understand they all had a great time as well. Thanks again,
guys.
I love it when a program comes together.
'Til next time
Paul Reisentz
STOA TAC Chairman
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