Marcos Maniacs

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