[Santiago Fonseca]

For Mike Braddock.

Hi Mike, I have been out of circulation for a while and have moved on with my Cobra and my problem with the builder and Everett-Morrison.

However, as I checked the boards to see what was happening I noticed your comment and - believe me, I do not want to start down this path again - but I felt I needed to make sure you knew how I came about Cavaliere and E-M. Your recollection of what happened is a bit off in your posting.

Here's what happened.

In early 1998 I contacted Classic Roadsters (CR) of Fargo, ND and spoke with Lon Johnston, a very personable and honest sounding man (on the phone), and HE recommended Cavaliere because "CR had a builder who lived my way" and gave me Cavaliere's number. So I called him and made an appointment to come by - he lived three hours away from me then. When we first met, he told me the CR Cobras were of inferior quality, and to illustrate his point, he showed me a CR body he had in his backyard and told me that it would cost me an additional 5-6 K just to "fix" the problems with their product to have a good car. He then mentioned E-M and recommended their product, so we went to see the plant on a Saturday and I met Brett and was given a great tour of the plant.

The factory looked great and everything looked to be on the up and up. Brett was very open and honest and allowed me to look anywhere and take as many pictures as I wanted. It was then that Brett told my wife and I that Cavaliere was one of E-M's preferred builders and that I could not go wrong with him.

The rest is all in the Cavaliere Cars thread.

A curious fact is that when I first went to see Cavaliere, he was working out of his garage in the back of his house (bells should have gone off) but told me he was having a new shop built because his present shop kept getting broken into. His web site showed a big shop and several cars outside so it sounded plausible.

Looking back on all that, I should have seen all the signs, but I had a Cobra in my dream and he talked the talk. Too bad he didn't walk the walk.

I am now living in Germany and have managed to repair my Cobra as much as I can and have had a tremendous summer of cruising with it here. It is just gorgeous here in the summer. I have hooked up with a group of Cobra owners (mostly Mohr Cobras and some from Australia) and have cruised around and gone top car shows with it. There are 8 of us Cobra owners in the local area. There's a big show in June in Mainz-Finthen and another in July in Kaiserslautern. Life is good.

I still have many issues with mine, but at least - after being repaired by others and made safe to ride, I have been replacing crappy components with new as they fail.

Have a great 2004.

PS. many people in the Cobra community supported me through this fiasco of mine. Unfortunately, the authorities (DMV, Attorney General, BBB, and others) chose to look the other way and the bad guy won.

Santiago.