[Healeys] concours judging

[Josef.Eckert at t-systems.com]

Kees,
You should not believe the finest Concours car is one left in a barn for the
past 40-50 years after the one and only drive from the dealers showroom.
Let me go back to Concours and what's all behind. Why are we doing Concours
Competitions?
For me the main reason is to attract restorers to finish their cars close to
original factory specification to "keep the legend alive and look like it
should".
As long as I am judging Healeys, I never had an unrestored car to judge. So we
can assume 100% of the Austin-Healeys in Concours are restored cars. So its to
mark the cars and identify the ones which are closest to factory (specs )
appearance.
With our Concours Competitions we want to attract the owners to do a "proper"
restoration following our  "Concours Rules", which means for standard class -
as near as possible to the specification it left the factory. "There is no
specification for uneven gaps".
When judging, I allow me to honour when one has not followed all shortcomings
which were done by the factory because of keeping production costs low. There
is a second point. We have professional car restorers who like to bring their
finished cars for Concours having their business in mind. To say private
restored cars are usually of a higher quality (closer to detail, more time
spent for proper panel alignments etc.) and we want to keep Concours to
enthusiasts and not as a sales argument for professional restorers. Hope you
see there is much more around Concours than just keeping a car as close as
possible to factory specs.
At National Concours we have a real serious problem, a different one to face.
In our Concours Rules its stated the cars which go into Concours have to be
driven on their own wheels to the event, not trailered.
We are sure at previous events, the one or other car was trailered to a place
close to the event and only did let me say the final 10 miles on its own. Even
by asking the owners for the cars trip meter mileages when they book in and
checking their MOT certificate where the mileage is also stated, we still
expect some fraud.

To have the "perfect" car in Concours and it comes out as a non winner is a
problem we will never face.
To finalize, if a car shows up with "gap problems" there are many more other
problem areas on the same car

Josef Eckert