Marti Auto Works - Concourse Quality, Hobbyist Price
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How come my (window sticker, Marti report, tag, radiator hose, parts, battery cables, spark plug wires, data plate, build sheet, order card, ownercard, statistics, anything else) is (wrong, incorrect, sloppy, not like my original, anything else)?

We do make mistakes. When we are convinced we made a mistake, we fix that mistake.

Let's start first with an indirect example: You want a correctly restored car. You see one on ebay that looks just like what you have wanted. There are lots of nice pictures that seem to indicate the car is what you have dreamed of. You are the highest bidder! You anxiously await the transport company showing up at your home to deliver your treasure. The day arrives. The driver opens up the back door of the transport and carefully removes your car from its package. Now, you remove the car cover.

To your horror, you find the paint job looks terrible. Its full of . . . orange peel. And look at how the sheet metal doesn't line up. Feeling deflated, you open up the hood and find paint runs all over the fender aprons and firewall. What is this that you have bought?

The answer is . . . a correctly restored car! This car was built in the 20th century and it was built with 20th century technology. You've become so accustomed to the world you live in you don't remember how things were.

Now, Marti Auto Works is not about reinventing history but recreating it. That means warts and all.

Tags that were put on the car were for identification purposes, in most cases for the sake of assembly workers or repairmen. They were not installed so that you could see perfection in a stamping. More detail is found here:http://www.martiauto.com/faqfocus.cfm?qid=54

When these vehicles were being reproduced, the individual items used to make each vehicle was, in turn, supplied by another manufacturer. The manufacturers made items in batches. Although the items within a batch were probably 'identical,' there would be variations from batch to batch.

A classic example is the positive battery cable used on Mustangs and most other Fords from 1967-1970. The part number of the cable was C7ZF-14300-A and one would expect that a comparison of any two original cable would find they were identical. This is not the case. There were seven different running engineering changes made to this cable during its four years of use. One of the most obvious differences is the color of the ink used to print the ID marking. For a period of time, the cables were marked with yellow ink.

When Marti Auto Works (or any other manufacturer) decides to reproduce an item, they choose a version. Said differently, we are not producing seven different versions of the aforementioned battery cable. So, if someone has their original and receives our reproduction, they might be inclined to think we didn't make a correct part. It is not incorrect, it is just not their version.

This happens with everything from data plates (did you know there are four versions of the data plate for 1965 Mustangs?) and window stickers to wheels and windshields.

This still happens today. I had the windshield replaced in my new Mustang. The Carlite logo was at the center bottom of my original windshield. I was chagrined that the replacement windshield had the Carlite logo on the lower passenger corner of the glass. Is it incorrect? Of course not, its another version.

Some more drastic examples of substitutions happen at the very beginning or the very end of a production model year. More commentary on this can be found here: http://www.martiauto.com/faqfocus.cfm?qid=27

If we produce something that meets typical production standards, techniques, and versions of the era and you have an example that is different, our policy is we sold you something acceptable. If you disagree, we would be happy to produce a custom version that matches yours exactly, but there will be an extra cost to you to produce a one-off version. We leave that decision to you.


Answer provided by
Mr. Data
Last updated February 16, 2011