Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) Suffolk Cars

I found this on Face book. Seems sad and I don't understand how the large Company I expect it is would benefit from preventing sales of old style cars, Surely anyone interesting in purchasing a S100 is not interested in a more modern style of car, the only manufacturer I see benefiting from this is Morgan,


SUFFOLK SPORTSCARS LTD
I have today received the e-mail below from Roger Williams:

A NEWS RELEASE.

This is to advise your readers of events concerning Suffolk Sportscars Ltd.

///////

Roger Williams joined the Jaguar Drivers Club in 1965. He bought and restored a neglected 1932 SSII. Between 1960 and 1965 he was employed by Botwoods Ltd, the Jaguar main dealers in Ipswich. He was trained as a Jaguar engineer for 5 years.

In the following 50 years he personally owned at least a dozen new Jaguar cars; many more XK models were restored over many years.

Suffolk Sportscars Ltd was created in 1995 to manufacture replica cars , all using XJ/XK Jaguar components. The business grew very well and continued successfully until late 2019.

In late 2019 a large car manufacturer forced the company to cease and to stop making replicas. The manufacturers declared that use of their logos, designs and trademarks were not allowed. All appeals were rejected. Therefore no new replica cars can be made by Suffolk Sportscars Ltd.

Fortunately the company were able to carry out garage service work locally and to do engineering work for customers in Europe .

By mid February, the Covid 19 pandemic was expanding its devastating effects all over the World. In March the company faced total lockdown. The Government offered all employees a furlough scheme but all work had to stop for almost 5 months. We could not process any workshop orders, nor sales, no cash flow and difficulty to respond to customers enquiries.

In June, the directors Roger and Fraser Williams assessed the prospects for the company in the future.
With no new orders, no county shows, no travel and much less confidence from customers life became difficult.
Manufacturing of parts was restricted, created an ongoing problems for supply to customers.

After and seeking much professional and legal advise on trademarks, copyrights and company rescue, the company was obliged to go into liquidation with its creditors on August 11th 2020.

During 25 years of successful trading; Suffolk Sportscrs created almost 400 new replicas. Each car fulfilled the dreams of enthusiastic Suffolk classic owners all over the world. The Suffolk cars will live on for decades; so too will the thousands of memories associated with them.

All owners of Suffolk cars will still need maintenance, service, parts supplies and advise. A small new company is being formed by Philip Glanville; along with members of the Suffolk team. They will provide a full maintenance for all the original Suffolk cars, along with specialist service for all Jaguar cars.

Please contact Philip and Mike Tink at Suffolk Classic Services Ltd.
01728 745055 info@suffolkclassicservices.com

///////

Roger Williams
suffolk@ss100.com

Sad news indeed ☹️

Indeed.

I guess the remanufactured originals market for £500k+ cars is the root cause of this. If you were Jaguar you'd not want someone manufacturing pretty much the same thing for much less money than the factory replicas.

Will

I don't see any correlation between the £500k continuation cars and fibreglass replicas. They're different products for different customers.

There are plenty of other Jaguar replica manufacturers that are still in business. Why haven't Jaguar closed them down too ?

I'm sure there's more to this than is revealed in the press release. Roger did have a stroke some time ago and while he was recovering, the running of the company perhaps wasn't as it should have been.

One issue that's been discussed on the internet, in relation to this, is the use of donor identities on replica cars. There are numerous replicas (not only Suffolk) that are registered as XJ6 saloons, for example. Whether this has any direct bearing on the Suffolk saga remains speculation at the moment.

Very sad news indeed. I've long been a huge admirer of the Suffolk Sportscars replicas, and on the occasion that I met him, I found Roger Williams to be a very engaging and enthusiastic fellow.

The business environment is tough enough without a small company having to suffer this sort of corporate bullying. Very heavy handed if true.

A quick trawl of the internet failed to produce anything else on this story. I think Mike is probably right that there's more to this story than meets the eye.

Will, OK I had seen an article ages ago on building the six missing lightweight E-types but that that was a one off publicity exercise. Now after googling Re-manufactured Jaguar and looking at Jaguars website Re-manufactured classic page it appears they are mskeking another run of E-types plus going further back to make some D-Types and XKSS. Suffolk made the SS100 copy and now have moved forward to include the C-type plus XK120.

I never realised it but if Jaguar keep going back with limited edition models and Suffolk forward then they will end up making the same style cars. But you would expect a different market, I would not expect someone who can afford a £500,000 car to want a fibreglass copy.

Very sad indeed.

You can also add in the problem that JLR have with the thieving Chinese who make copies of JLR cars and whose courts use all sorts of excuses to reject complaints. For example the Chinese copy of the Evoque was allowed by the courts on the basis that pictures of the prototype had been seen before the copyright was lodged.

China has built an economy based on IP theft and commercial espionage. On this issue if no other, Trump is right.

The irony is that if Suffolk could hang on for another year or two, its likely they will outlast Jaguar cars anyway. They are in deep trouble once more.

Very sad, if indeed it's JLR that forced them to stop 'because we can & we've got more legal budget' then they should be ashamed, it not as if Suffolk pinch any customers

You would have though they could have licensed them & got an income stream but also fixed a cap on sales. I guess they made well under 100 cars pa so really no threat.