North American Exotic Replica Cars - Ken Esler (owner)

Greg Downey

June 26, 2004 Here are the shots I grabbed of the two NAERC Roadsters on display when I picked up the extra pieces for my replica chassis from Ken. The blue one was featured at Carlisle 04, while the red one was at Knott's 04. They are both awesome examples of how these kits can look when completed. The red Roadster is for sale, in fact. If anyone is interested, please email me and I will give you the builder's phone # (downeygr@yahoo.com).

The trip to Vancouver was pretty uneventful. I had more trouble getting into the country with an empty car than I had getting back out with almost $4k in parts! I only took 46 pictures of the cars. I was hoping one of them would have been built on a replica chassis, but both were on Fieros. Still, I got some decent shots of details I have always wondered about on the NAERC kits plus I got some far away shots of the two cars because I haven't seen any good ones from a distance floating around the Internet.

I have some specific comments that might help anyone as they look at the pictures, just click on a photo and you can read my comments!

This was my first opportunity to see replica Diablos that were actually finished well. I saw several examples of the real thing at Concorso last year. I would estimate that fit and finish on the NAERC replicas was every bit as good as the original cars, and in some cases, better. I also answered some of my questions about how things like the attached front bumper and light bezels would look. Yes, they give the car away as a replica to a discerning eye, but most people don't even know kits are available let alone what the differences would be. I think that most anyone would be fooled by either of these cars, and those who knew better would be very impressed.

Truthfully, I am still a bit bugged by the one-piece design just because I really want the car to look authentic to me. However, seeing the finished NAERC kits now, I am a lot less bugged. I don't know what I will end up doing for a kit yet (NAERC or D&R), but at least now I can see that the NAERC kit body junctions don't completely scream "KIT!!!" unless you are closer than 5 feet away. Still, I am building this car to please myself and I think I"m just wrestling with my own perfectionism. The short of the story is, I don't think anybody is going to be disappointed at all with an NAERC body so long as they know it has an attached bumper and light bezels, and they don't mind that. The only part of the trip that I was hoping to accomplish and didn't was to see an unfinished body. I can't speak to how much bodywork is required to produce cars like I saw on Monday. The blue Roadster still had a few waves in the quarter panels that could have been blocked out a little better, but I don't know whether that was due to mold issues or bad sanding practices.

All in all the cars looked great and any discredits I've noted are minor indeed. They were finished well both inside and out, and the NAERC body is very close to the original car.