How fun! I don't have a dog in this fight, so I'll just stir it up from the cheap seats and pi$$ off everybody.
Alan, when you started this, in the opening post you raised a discrepancy between the color you painted the speedster and the color referenced by SoCal.
OK, then SoCal replied that the speedster had been refurbished and repainted by them, and that they could provide the color code.
Alan, you called them out by posting " Clearly you are mistaken, your in house builders did not restore this particular speedster" and then provided a link to your re-"manufacturing" of the speedster (btw, beautiful job).
OK, but I noticed when looking at the pictures of the speedster driven out of the garage after its re-manufacturing and the pictures of the speedster at SoCal that somewhere along the line the engine hood morphed from one vent grill to two vent grills. That meant (to me) that Alan's hood was replaced. And that meant (to me) that someone did a hell of a paint matching on the new hood to Alan's color, or the whole car was repainted. And (to me) it would make perfectly good sense if I had the in-house (or contracted) ability to repaint the whole body, that's what I would do because it would also cover who knows what had accumulated since Alan's garage; like scratches, rock chips, fiberglass repairs, maybe even fire damage repairs that necessitated the hood replacement, etc., and best of all; add value to the resale.
I guess that when SoCal says the speedster was repainted and they and have the paint code, I'm not convinced they are "Clearly mistaken". Conversely it seems logical that it would be repainted.
But the thread then drifted into thinly (barely) veiled questions of integrity and honesty. And given what we have seen over the past few decades it is understandable why some of us knee-jerk to such conclusions.
After a month, SoCal was provoked by Stan to 'fess-up to the questions being asked.
SoCal said come to the shop, I'll show you everything.
Stan said "You have a phone, I can only assume? One with a camera on it?"
Within only 2 hours SoCal posted snapshots from what they claim is their facility. This looks like the 'real deal' to me. Obviously there has been a significant start-up investment. The immediate production of new vehicles is visibly organized and poised to proceed. SoCal says cars are already the process of production, and from the pictures, that clearly appears to be true.
But then Danny's "BS Meter" got pegged. I'm sorry Danny, we almost never disagree, but I don't see a lot of BS in anything SoCal posted on this thread. He answered each question and visually proved the answers to be true. To Greg's point, the SoCal website needs to be cleaned up (a lot), but that is an issue on its own. If your issue is manufacturer vs. builder vs. assembler, that just seems like semantics; I look at SoCal's pictures and come to the conclusion that SoCal is all-of-the-above and the words are interchangeable.
I say "so what" if SoCal outsources the body shells, chassis, engines, paint and all the other little gadgets like brakes and gauges. How much of that differs from the Big 2 during their startup? How much of that is still the same for them even today? For one thing, you have to be out of your mind to have an in-house boutique paint shop in CA just for speedsters and spyders.
I think SoCal has been forthright and honest in their response on this thread. If they cleaned up their website it would really further full confidence in their credibility. I suppose if I were looking at a 2 year wait for a spyder at the same time I was iooking at those bodies and chassis w/ kitted component totes just sitting on the pallet racks at SoCal I might be inclined to give them a call and ask "how long for the one on the 2nd shelf to roll out the door, in silver? (Although white is also nice, right?.)