<VV> <CORSA Chapters> CORSA blunder

[Vairtec Corp]

Bill, I key on two of the things you mentioned:

"The '63 White Monza Lambrecht car was classified into the Modified 
class for Concours - technically correct due to the incorrect size of 
his whitewall radial tires"

and

"To call it modified because he didn't drive it here on 52 year old bias 
belt tires is insane."

I now comment:

The car was classified correctly, so any "blunder" would be with the 
classification rules, not their application in this instance.  Any 
lesson learned here should be about revisions to the rules, not about 
making exceptions to them.

If an exception were to be made here, I think the wise exception would 
have been to not place the car in the concours competition, instead 
putting it on display in a central location and giving the owner some 
kind of special recognition.

To a great extent I think the problem is rooted not in the rules but in 
the nomenclature.  "Stock," whether it is accompanied by "Factory" or 
"Original" or "Restored" or some other term, connotes not only condition 
comparable to as it left the factory all those years ago, but also a 
stock appearance to the ordinary person. "Modified" connotes not only 
those changes evident to the cognoscenti, but also changes readily 
visible to the average joe. So I think the term "Modified" should be 
reserved for cars with obvious changes -- aftermarket wheels, custom 
paint, high-back seats, that sort of thing.  If a car looks stock to an 
ordinary person, it is in my view sufficiently stock to go into a class 
with "stock" attached to its name.

You could have "Stock 1" for the utterly authentic cars, "Stock 2" for 
those with minor changes such as modern radial tires, and "Stock 3" for 
cars that appear stock but have such things as a '66 engine in a '64.

This would avoid the pejorative nature of calling the Lambrecht car 
"modified," and it is a semantic distinction that has been meaningful to 
a lot of people through the years.  For decades, Corvair owners have 
gotten their knickers in a twist over being moved out of "stock."  So 
don't move them out of "stock," just move them into a different "stock."

--Bob Marlow