Guys, I learned a couple of lessons from my comments on BAT and some of that is reinforced by what I am reading here.
First, I have always posted in my real name which is because I don't hide behind a thing -- in the future I guess I should change my handle so I can do it in secret but that is not my nature. Second, if you read the posts in Order you will see that I was clear that I am no expert but just a guy that has owned several of these cars. Third, my 66 GT350 may not be the best in the world as someone in this post pointed out but I have a lot of confidence that Tony Conover did the best that he could with it. Tony is a great guy and pointed out all the issues before he sold it to me, and I think it is still a decent canvas to use as a comparison.
Fourth, and I was clear about this in the posts, I personally judged that car at Keels & Wheels and the issues that I raised were pointed out to me by another judge because I was enamored by the red paint and wanted to give it first place in the Shelby class -- remember I bought the same damn car -- I was just reading the news as I heard it. Fifth, and this really pisses me off, if you read the posts in context, and in order, I started by just making the basic observations that it had the wrong steering wheel, paxton, exhaust, wheels, and to me at least the Panhard bar looked wrong. None of that is wrong as far as I know.
Sixth, and this is where it went off the rails. Rather than say thank you for the info in my first post the Seller hit Google and called my office to tell me to stop posting uniess I was buying the car -- that was no bueno to me which did encourage me to keep on posting. I thought it was funny that the guy was calling me from a Hyundai Dealership which is where I started stepping on his neck about being a Hyundai Dealer. If he hadn't beat on the lawyers I would have left the Hyundai out but I needed a little response. Seventh, and if you read the posts in order I pointed out, in many of the posts, that it was a nice car and good for Cars & Coffee but that it has a lot of non-authentic stuff. I know where my car stands in that hierarchy and it has a lot less problems than that one.
I am probably wrong on some of the issues that looked wrong to me but I will say, that except for the beat on the lawyers refrain which is a common mantra these days, the Seller never responded with a fact. There was a good side effect of using my real name, the number of people that reached out to me because they wanted to get my observations about the car having seen it in person was extraordinary. There were eighteen bids and I spoke with three of the bidders who ended up bidding. One of the bidders even flew into Houston and I had him over to my house to compare that car to mine. Lastly, and this is pretty typical of the public web mob mentality, not one of the guys that commented on the self-imposed drama was a bidder.
Do I wish I had not gotten involved in restrospect? In a word, yes. What did I get out of it? I met some guys on the phone to talk about Shelbys who clearly knew less about the cars than me. Most likely one of them will be a SAAC member one day.