Takes me back to the day a furious customer adamantly wanted to know
why his Spitfire had been delivered with wire wheels on the front,
disc wheels on the back and one of each as a spare in the boot. What's
more he hadn't ordered wire wheels but got invoiced for a full set.
Amazingly, it had left the factory like that without intervention,
passed through the dealer's PDI and got delivered. When shown the car,
I burst out laughing - but he <curiously> couldn't see the funny side
of it and I got laid out on the pavement by his rigt fist. We managed
to get it sorted there and then - though the dealer had noted the
'deficiency' and had applied for a special warranty clearance to carry
out the rectification at the first service. Re-working cars at PDI was
not allowed as the dealer only got paid GBP5.00 ($8.00) a car
The story did have a happy ending - about thirty years later when,
quite by chance, we had a twice in a lifetime encounter. The second
chance meeting was in the Gaydon Museum. Not only did he buy me a
stupendous lunch to redress his assault - he even apologised and most
profusely. By all accounts, the dual wheeled Spitfire more than
fulfilled his expectations and he eventually handed it over to a
scrapyard in 1982.
But a mere loose wheel bearing?
Consider the LH steer Herald with a RH pedal layout and the
Toledo with two doors on one side and one on the other? And the cars
that came out of the paintshop looking like rainbows when the colour
valves on the paint line failed - red at the front, orange in the
middle and yellow at the back?
After all, it's only a Triumph - not a Ferrari.
I suppose the moral here is that if you introduce aspects of human
involvement in the manufacture of mechancial assemblies, anything can
happen - and usually does <smile>
Jonmac
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