[Gach]

Originally Posted by JSchmitz

I bought one Optima red top battery. High price and short life. That's was it for me.

The problem is which battery do you by now, that you know will be a good battery? Mine were all yellow tops. I really can’t complain about first one, it sat for 2 years, with out every being charged while motor up date was being done. Years ago you could just throw them on a charger and they come back, so I thought. I guess sometimes your so into the up grade you forget about little stuff. The second one was one I got burnt on. They have a sticker on them that tells you the born date. I mean whoever thinks to check that, didn’t realize it at the time but sticker had fallen off into battery tray. This one I take out for winter and have a battery tender on it. So I keep checking it. Been two years so far so good.

[Dragncar]

Originally Posted by MarkS57

Bruce Crower passed in 2019. Bloomberg says Doug Evans is CEO today.

https://www.hemmings.com/stories/201...ower-1930-2019

He & Harvey Crane were fierce competitors but respected one another. Unfortunately, we won't likely see anyone like them again, and that is a loss for sure.

I am just a big Crower fan.
Its the only US company I know of that you could build a American V8 and get most of your parts from one manufacturer.
You could use Crower and have Crower Rods, crank, cam, lifters, shaft rockers, retainers, springs, pushrods and more.
If I could get free parts from one company, Crower would be it.

[Jack Gifford]

Ed Iskenderian is a true legend. Remember the clown ads? Had to love his sense of humor. But his products were serious stuff- like forged 7075 alloy rods back in 1959!

[JSchmitz]

Originally Posted by Gach

The problem is which battery do you by now, that you know will be a good battery? Mine were all yellow tops. I really can’t complain about first one, it sat for 2 years, with out every being charged while motor up date was being done. Years ago you could just throw them on a charger and they come back, so I thought. I guess sometimes your so into the up grade you forget about little stuff. The second one was one I got burnt on. They have a sticker on them that tells you the born date. I mean whoever thinks to check that, didn’t realize it at the time but sticker had fallen off into battery tray. This one I take out for winter and have a battery tender on it. So I keep checking it. Been two years so far so good.

I have had good luck with Interstate batteries. They sell them, for a good price, at Costco. But I also buy batteries at Walmart sometimes. It's close, easy, cheap, and they have a good warranty. I have also started using battery tenders on seldom used batteries. Again, Walmart for like $35. Keeps them fresh as a daisy!

[dataway]

Just wanted to mention that equity group buyouts are not always a bad thing. TPG bought Ducati motorcycles in 2006 when they were a brand with huge recognition but poor management, quality control and organization. It was a joke, but not a joke, that you had to disassemble and reassemble every new Ducati after you bought it to have any level of reliability. The parts and dealer network were a mess.

10 years later they were winning world championships and producing some of the most sought after motorcycles in the world. Quality, reliability and their parts/dealer system vastly improved. Now they are literally famous in the industrial world for some of most advanced, and shortest concept to prototype systems in the world. And I doubt you could find one Chinese made part anywhere on any of their products, all made in Italy, Germany, Austria etc. They are currently owned by Audi/Volkswagen.

Private equity groups do typically have profit as their major consideration. However the route to profit can be different for different companies. In the case of Ducati they had excellent brand recognition, a storied history of racing victories and a stellar design team. What they were lacking was effective management, organization and efficient manufacturing.

Some companies have a great product, but poor marketing. Some great marketing and a poor product. Private equity firms typically have no interest in long term ownership, they want to create a financially healthier company that they can then sell for much more than they paid for it. Some times that means better quality products, sometimes that means worse. Depends on the original position of the company. Ducati had a product lots of people wanted to buy, but they hesitated due to quality issues, or could not even get one due to manufacturing inefficiencies. TPG fixed that and the sales skyrocketed.

Private equity groups usually only buy companies that already have a bad problem that they feel they can fix, they buy them cheap, fix the problems, sell them at a large profit. So, you often can't blame them, they buy companies that are basically going broke because they are run poorly, but "fixing" them financially sometimes involves changes in product quality or source of manufacturing.

[mgarblik]

Thanks for pointing out a real success story. I 'm sure we generally hear more about the failures. In the performance parts business, it seems nothing good ever happens after an equity group buyout, but there must be a few successful ones hidden in there somewhere.

[PAUL K]

I remember when Joe Lunati sold out. He was genuinely surprised when he, his brother and their cam designer were let go under the first day of new ownership. It never made sense to me. Lunati is still around but ceased being a "racers" company the day Joe was let go. They're now under the same umbrella as Comp Cams but operate very differently.

[mgarblik]

Originally Posted by PAUL K

I remember when Joe Lunati sold out. He was genuinely surprised when he, his brother and their cam designer were let go under the first day of new ownership. It never made sense to me. Lunati is still around but ceased being a "racers" company the day Joe was let go. They're now under the same umbrella as Comp Cams but operate very differently.

Joe Lunati was inducted into the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame shortly after he was bought out. Same year as Arnie Beswick was inducted, so ELarson and I were there. in person. Joe was plenty bitter even in his acceptance speech and didn't mince any words. Many in the audience were on the edge of their seats! Mike Thermos had similar feelings when Holley bought NOS, fired everyone and almost instantly went from having 90+% of the market to less than 25%. Within 1 year, the NOS sports drink had greater value than the NOS product line itself. I could list 50 other similar stories.

[Sun Tuned]

After Holley took over and made that move…. They then decided since they wanted to sit in bowling green and just count money, joe said they stopped ALL walk in business.
Guess they thought they were getting gouged by the workers pocketing some of the funds as nearly all local stuff round here was green $.

I won’t say what the Net profit on just that alone was, they killed . However it created some serious bad taste in longtime walk-in mouths. And we all knew it wasn’t Joe’s decision, that one was solely on Holley.

[dataway]

The reason automotive high performance products get hit so badly is that in general ... they were founded by car guys, not businessmen. They focused mostly on product design, performance and branding. They cared about their product, but often the business model is flawed. Large corporations or equity groups can snap them up for the value of the branding alone. They may be big in performance world, but on a global scale they are tiny, so you can buy a half dozen of them, homogenize their manufacturing and bank on their branding to sell products.

The high performance companies we are all so familiar with back in the day prioritized product rather than profit .... to some degree, that's why they ended up for sale or struggling. It's a fine balance to maintain product quality and R&D relevance and still have a financially healthy company.

Have to keep in mind, to the big players in the world, the automotive performance market is a niche market full of middle income people with dirty hands. In general it's going to attract the bottom tier of the equity groups that just want to pump and dump. Any "small" company that manufactures the stock replacement parts that line the shelves of a NAPA are going to be huge compared to the high performance market.

When you realize about 1/100 people have an aftermarket performance product on their engine, whereas 100/100 people need stock replacement parts you get an idea of their actual place in the pecking order. In the big picture companies like Crower, Crane, Lunati (Joey lived down the street from me in G-town TN), RHS etc ... are tiny insignificant companies in the eyes of investors, kind of like Walmart compared to the Mom and Pop store you grew up with.

[Sun Tuned]

Dataway,
Bout three or four doors down from Dana Kirk…

You musta been close by?

[Tom Vaught]

Holley (AFTERMARKET) actually went bankrupt a couple of times over the years.

HOLLEY OEM was bought by Borg Warner and had a very good "Engineering Partnership"
with Borg Warner. Bob Telep and Jeff Komar were both originally with Holley Carb and both retired after many years with Bork Warner (when the Holley name was dropped).

But that was typical right up to the day when Vic's daughter sold Edelbrock to the "BEAN COUNTERS".

Tom V.

[Sun Tuned]

Tom
I saw a Holley warehouse/plant type of a deal just outside Tuscaloosa Alabama. Still has the sign out front, long vacated though.

What was that deal?

[dataway]

Originally Posted by Sun Tuned

Dataway,
Bout three or four doors down from Dana Kirk…

You musta been close by?

Actually down the road would have been more accurate. I lived in Windyke by the country club. Joey (the son, in 1974'ish) lived on S. Germantown Rd. I think. Used to drive by his house on the way to high school. We all of course wanted Lunati cams because of that.

Did you know Lee Brewer? Forget his Dad's first name, but they ran a sprint car, lived in G-town, the Dad sold Snap-On.

I graduated Germantown in 76, I think Joey was a couple years older than me.

BTW, there was an old woman (or seemed old to me at 17) that I'm pretty sure also lived on S. G-town rd. nice home on a big lot on the west side of the road ... she had me and a couple of the local gear heads cover over and look at her old E-type Jag that was sitting in a garage not running. We looked at it and had no idea what it was ... way beyond our knowledge. I think she ended up selling it for a couple thousand .. was perfect other than not running. Might have even been at the Wildwood farm. Anyway ... wish I bought that one and put it away.

BTW, wife and I are looking to move back down there shortly ... hopefully up around Paris somewhere. But almost for sure west of Nashville ... I'm tired of mountains.

[Sun Tuned]

Geeze you lived right around the corner from my wife.
Her dad and joe used to race out at Lakeland. He lived off of edgeworth and crestridge.

You remember Homer Formby (wood guy) lived right around the corner also.

Did the lady live in the little house to the right as you went in the drive to wildwood farms?

[dataway]

I remember everyone was proud that Formby products were from a "Local boy"

Spent many a weekend at Lakeland, I'll spare you the story, but the whole reason, I'm in NY right now, was due to a teenage accident in my GTO, the very one I still own, coming home from a day at Lakeland.

I remember the lady living what seemed a small home, not too far from the road, on a huge lot, garage or maybe small barn around back, doors facing south I think. Large old trees, had the look of a place built long before Germantown grew up. At the time, I think the polo fields were to the south.

As a kid you notice different things than when you grow up Like the "Ford/Mopar" written on the lanes of the long straight on Quincy road. Was mostly woods when I was growing up, Germantown was a quiet place. By the time you got to Hacks Crossroads you were in the woods.