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Vicky Brit is no more.

Darwin

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Got an email form Victoria British saying they have sold out to Moss. Hope Moss continues to offer the parts for older Spits that VB sold.
 

DrEntropy

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Oh man...another one bits the dust.

...you mean "bytes" th' dust, eh? :devilgrin:

Not surprised. My guess is that LMC is the main part of their business and goin' well. The quality of the VB parts has fallen by the wayside steadily since the turn of the century. We stopped buying from them fifteen years ago as a result.
 

PAUL161

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I'm surprised they stayed in business selling British car parts as long as they did. I gave up buying from them years ago due to the poor quality of most of their parts. I think it was just a sideline business anyway, I don't think their hurting.
 
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The trick with VB was figuring out what fit into which ofthe three categories of parts they sold a particular item fit. My experience was that they sold, some parts thatwere right, some that were wrong but would work ok and some that were wrong andmight work for some cars but weren’t useful for mine. Once you figured that out, they weren’tperfect but could be useful.

As for quality, yea it had gone down over the years, butto be fair many suppliers have quality issues, castings too heavy, chromeplating applied too thin, questionable base materials. Hard to get good
Stuff at a reasonable price, and perhaps with much comingout of the Asian countries, high quality may not be a priority for what are lownumbers runs.

 

Grantura_MKI

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Not a big loss at all. I was a dealer with them years ago, but grew bored with to poor quality and bad business practices. If you didn’t purchase x amount of items and order regularly, you where not given the dealer pricing.
I have found that their repo truck parts are not top quality as well.
 

DrEntropy

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Not a big loss at all. I was a dealer with them years ago, but grew bored with to poor quality and bad business practices. If you didn’t purchase x amount of items and order regularly, you where not given the dealer pricing.
I have found that their repo truck parts are not top quality as well.

Pleased to learn I'm not alone.
 
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I didn't buy much over the past years, brake bits and some odds and ends they got from other suppliers and didn't actually contract to have made. Most ranged from not quite right to really not right and were a waste of time.
 

Bob McElwee

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When we were leaving St Louis to go to Open Roads in Lake Tahoe the starter acted up on the BJ8 my wife was driving. Seeing as we had 2K mile trip in front of us I though it would be a good idea to replace it. Called Vicky B, had a ex-neighbor who had moved the KC area pick it up and meet us at the motel we were staying at that night. We missed the ceremony in Jeff City where MO declared that say as Austin Healey day. Everyone else went and we drove straight through without turning the engine off. Swapped it out on a very hot parking lot, had dinner with friends and he returned the old one back to VB the next day.
That and a loose wire on the BT7 fuel pump o. The trip home were the only problems we had in 11K mile round trip in two cars.
 

waltesefalcon

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We used to regularly use them at the shop but we weren't buying enough parts anymore to maintain our dealer status and at the same time the quality was going downhill. This was in 2004 or so and by the time I'd quit being a mechanic in 2007 we weren't using VB for anything.
 

Basil

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I've a pair of Webber's in the garage, along with a manifild for my Spit that I bought from VB.
 

JPSmit

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We used to regularly use them at the shop but we weren't buying enough parts anymore to maintain our dealer status and at the same time the quality was going downhill. This was in 2004 or so and by the time I'd quit being a mechanic in 2007 we weren't using VB for anything.

Hadn't ordered from them in years - though when I was starting which was about 2004. They always had a great sale in January or so. I do have a fairly clear memory of Tony coming on this very forum and talking about opening a VB box and the product inside having a Moss part number on it. I suspect that these companies pretty much all use the same jobbers.
 
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I expect you're right. Despite our enthusiasm for our marques the market just isn't big enough to support several suppliers, and sometimes not even one high end quality one.
 

Gliderman8

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Never bought from VB. It's not because I didn't try but every time I called their customer service the people I spoke to were clueless.
I also stopped buying from TRF; I had a bad experience on an order I placed with them. I started ordering from Moss and Rimmer Bros. and never looked back.
 
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HealeyRick

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When I first started restoring my bugeye in 1977, i bought lots of NOS parts from Long Motor Corp in Lenexa, KS. I think they were probably buying up old stocks from closing BMC and BL places and reselling them. This was the precursor of Vicky Brit and I found some unavailable stuff through them. Here's the story of the business that was started by Leo Long from his 2008 obituary:

[FONT=&quot]From the early 60's through 1975 he worked as a mechanical engineer for two firms in the Kansas City area becoming a chief engineer. Always involved with cars as a hobby, he went into business selling car parts in 1975. Located at 18th & Oak, in Kansas City, this business went broke in 1979 and he lost everything. He started over in 1981…his present business Long Motor Corporation, dba. Victoria British Ltd., LMC Truck and Black Dragon.

[/FONT]
As time went on, I bought less and less from Vicky Brit for the same reasons everyone else has noted.
 

hibob

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The only thing I bought from VB and was happy with (And I only bought one thing) was a non-stainless steel good old Walker exhaust system for my TR3. Everyone else is selling stainless and I don't want an exhaust system that will outlive me!
 

pdplot

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Bought mostly TRF, some Moss for TR6, bought tube shocks for $17 each or so from Rock Auto. Centerline and Alfaparts for Alfa. Years past - Abingdon Spares and Moss for TD, Clark's Corvair Parts for the poor man's Porsche. No problems with any of them other than B.O's.
 

DrEntropy

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Moss has also acquired Terry's Jag parts and another Jaguar parts house I can't recall just now.
 
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