Does anybody here know the company Emipire Motors, Inc. in El Paso, Texas? Among other things they are producing they are casting exhaust manifolds (also Pierce-Arrow manifolds I have seen).
The case is that a friend of mine has a 1931 Graham «822». He was in contact with this company, which could cast a new exhaust manifold for him. A couple of year back he paid round $3.000 for the job. Never did they shipped the manifold and did not answer letters, e-mails nor telphones. http://www.empiremotorsinc.com/Car-Manifolds.htm
Thank you for any information!
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Oivind, I hate to tell you this, but Empire was removed from the PAS vendor list years ago for shoddy business practices. I believe they have reorganized themselves from time to time due to legal considerations, and may not even be in business under the same corporate structure these days. Your friend may well be out $3K.
Man, I’ll tell you what, for $3000 I’d be making a little vacation trip to El Paso and knocking on someone’s door. The website makes it seem like it’s still in business, and even if it’s not, there’s an owner that lives in that area I’d track down. Yes, have heard bad tales about this place for a number of years….. http://empiremotorsinc.com/
That kind of money is grand larceny, and purposefully taking money with no intention to deliver the services is fraud. I used to be a manager of a county consumer affairs department here in the DC area, and faced more than a few of these unscrupulous creatures. Got my share of death threats as well. As this is an international issue, your friend may want to try your version of the FBI, Interpol, or you may want to contact the Texas Attorney General’s office. Texas may also have a state Consumer Affairs office.
Assuming you have some form of a contract and some correspondence, or at least records of phone calls to verify your story, someone should be able to put a little pressure on these guys to either do what they agreed to or refund the money. I will say that if these guys are as shoddy as they seem, they are generally very good at dealing with (read this as lying to) the law as well. There was a company in Texas a few years ago that marketed rebuilt or “new” first generation Mustangs that was found duplicating ID numbers or some such activity. They promised cars for delivery, then kept the deposits and never followed through with the cars. Wonder if these guys were part of that scam?
These same people ripped off the prior owner of my Pierce-Arrow for $2000, presumable for a set of heads that were never shipped.
Steve
Val Blazer is the A****** who is stealing everyone’s money. He has a relative who is a district court judge who keeps back the lawsuits. There have been several diffrent names used but the result is all the same. People who are out lots of money. He stuck it to car, truck, and even tractor collectors. He attended the 2003 PAS meet looking to get seed money for lots of projects that never got done. It’s always best to post questions here when dealing with people who are not club members. Ed
Thank you everybody – I will bring these information over to my friend.
Oivind
It is a shame that there are such RATS in our hobby!