Quote:

---

Quote:

---

Quote:

---

Quote:

---

Wow, it surprises me how many people are giving the OP flak over this. Certainly the first to scream if it happened to them.

It's sad that people are so numb to the idea of making this right. OP might as well post this on any car forum he can find.

---

Yea the "divided we fall mentality", I don't understand the lynch without due process concept. And I don't understand why asking for hearing the other side is giving the OP flak. NOBODY, I repeat, NOBODY has stated that the OP does not deserve his money returned, GOT IT?

---

^^^Yet another example of it, thanks. Quit trying for the lock.

The other side has been asked for REPEATEDLY and nothing came back. That is nonsense.

---

I asked a question about what I don't understand and your response is "trying for a lock". Nice attempt at avoiding the issue, you in cahoots with US tool?

---

Quote:

---

Was there an investor's packet? Were the 'investors' given a written document explaining the risks that they signed and returned? Did the investors understand how much of the company they owned and how they would be compensated?

When the foundry 'lost the tooling' there was a fiduciary duty on behalf of the investors to sue to protect their investment - was this done?

That's quite a yarn. Maybe it's true. Or maybe a guy made a bunch of promises to customers, took their money ahead of time, screwed up, paid some only people back to some degree, and figured the others could just eat it.

---

Thanks for saving me the trouble of bringing up essentially the same questions about them being "investors" as opposed to "customers".

My U.S. Car Tool driveshaft loop works great. It's the only and last product I ever see myself buying from John P., however, as a direct result of this debacle.

Quote:

---

Quote:

---

John Paseman..... This is not his first scam against the Mopar community, who remembers the 69 GTX he had on HEMINET years ago? It was a gold car with a bench seat...... Anyone recall??

---

Care to fill others in that don't remember?

---

Quote:

---

When a company fails (assuming that it is not a sole propritorship) , the investors, the vendors, and the customers all lose out. That's the way it is and the way it has to be. It is not a scam if it is not intentional.

When an honest hard working mans business fails, and he has exausted all of the business' resources and closes the business, it's over.
He is now free to gain new investors an re-start fresh. It would be neither fair or legally prudent to ask the new investors to make good on debts from a defunct company.
It sucks for those who lose their investments, deposits, gift cards, etc. I'm sure it hurts worse for the owners such as John who give it all they have and lose everything.
It needs to be this way, or we would not have the great benefits we gain from the risk takers. Look at Henry Ford, and most of the great men who built the auto industry. Many failures and fresh starts happened before success.

If John started his new business with the same or similar name, that was a big mistake, and he should expect problems like this.

If I was John I would personally (outside of the new company) come to agreement with the op.
If I was the op, I would forget it and move on.

---

Quote:

---

I spoke to John today and told him to take care of this, he told me he hasn't looked at the thread, but then when I said there were links to yahoo groups he yes "I know" I immediately responded with how do you know if you haven't seen it. He is very aware and chooses not to deal with it. He did tell me I could broker a deal to get Mitchel his money back under the condition that this post go away, are you serious, just remember you cant get in trouble for telling the truth even if its bad about someone.

---

Looks like John himself confirmed this when posting his "apology" for failing.

I've seen the vending space at Carlisle every year & have been enticed to look into the products & services for one car I have. Not now. I was burned by a restoration shop many years ago in the mid 1980's. Lost over $4000 out of pocket, plus the car needed to be redone from the poor work that was done on it. I swore that if I ever saw any hint of a red flag again from a vendor I'd run.

See you at the finish line.

Quote:

---

But I still had no way to produce the injection molded part and that ultimately was the demise of the project. I have the hard tooling, I have the method to cast the metal ring, I have the tooling for the injection molded part and no way to produce those parts without an enormous cost.

---

Quote:

---

Everybody's been moaning a groaning about John Paseman not coming on to give his side of the story. He has. Now all the barracks lawyers and barracks ethicists are coming out of the woodwork telling him - or at least each other - how he should run his life and his business.

You yelled, he came. Time to move on

---

Quote:

---

Everybody's been moaning a groaning about John Paseman not coming on to give his side of the story. He has. Now all the barracks lawyers and barracks ethicists are coming out of the woodwork telling him - or at least each other - how he should run his life and his business.

You yelled, he came. Time to move on

---

Quote:

---

Don't let your name be forever linked to the word "scam".

---

Quote:

---

Quote:

---

Just think how easy it would be for USCT to close the lid !!

---

---

How could anyone miss this...

Quote:

---

An Apology and the facts

I would like to start with an apology to those folks from the 66-67 Charger community that invested in the medallion project with me. I failed, the project failed and I do apologize to you all.

Facts
In 2003 I began a project to produce the decklid medallion from the 66-67 Charger. At the time, there where no parts being reproduced for these cars and they had become very much in need of parts, primarily any trim parts. I have a long standing love of these cars, my Father brought one home when I was 6 years old, it became my Mom’s every day driver, we went on family vacations in the car and it is still in our family. I set out to manufacture the medallion not because it would be a huge commercial success, but because it was a much needed part for the 66-67 Charger community.

I did some early CAD work on the medallion, investigated various methods of manufacturing the parts and discussed this ideas with several potential tool / die companies. I ultimately found one that would work with me on the short run and had some innovative and creative ideas on manufacturing tooling.

I commissioned a CAD model be developed by them and they prepared a tooling cost estimate from that model. The tooling costs was much greater than I could afford and I turned to the 66-67 Charger community for the investment I needed to produce the tooling and short run of parts.

Today, there are many vehicles for this type of funding, crowd sourcing and kickstarter being two large examples, but in 2004/2005 it was pretty innovative. The thought was pretty simple; get a number of the folks that would benefit from the medallion to invest so we could produce the hard tooling and short production run of the parts. Each person would receive a medallion at below the cost of manufacture and we would sell enough to ultimately break even on the project.

I had some of the funds required to produce the tooling and needed to raise the rest, so I asked the owners of 66-67 chargers to participate and they did. I collected enough investors to place the order for the hard tooling. All the folks that gave me money for the project knew the parts did not exist, that we were going to use their money, along with mine, to produce the tooling and then the parts.
Producing the tooling took longer than expected, the tool / die company I was working with was having hard times of their own (that had nothing to do with our project) but we did ultimately get the tooling delivered, with one large problem. They had miscalculated the size of one of the injection mold cavities and they could not produce the part in their machine.

I searched for an alternative that was within our very small budget and had no luck. I had the hard tooling for the metal part transferred to the foundry and they ran a small sample of parts to validate size and fit. Without the injection molding, we were stuck.
This had taken a long time and at this point, I had stopped predicting a date of when the parts would be ready. It was becoming embarrassing to say “60 more days” and then that date would come and go. At one point, I decided to get the metal parts cast so I would have something for the folks that participated in this project with me. I placed an order with the foundry and received devastating news when I followed up with them after 2 weeks; they could not find our tooling. A lot of time had passed since the initial sample run and they could not locate the tooling.

At this point, I was facing the likely hood of having to produce another set of very expensive tooling and the company that had done it for me initially was closed down. I offered folks refunds and quite a few decided to have me return their initial money. Some decided to continue on the project with me, in the hopes we would be able to get this much needed part for the chargers produced.
I continued to explore options for both the injection molding and the hard tooling. Time was passing and one day I called the foundry again and discussed the dilemma with the owner. He said he would look for the tooling and he called me back in a week or so with the news; he had found the tooling!

But I still had no way to produce the injection molded part and that ultimately was the demise of the project. I have the hard tooling, I have the method to cast the metal ring, I have the tooling for the injection molded part and no way to produce those parts without an enormous cost.

During this time, my small business had been floundering (as many did) and we were mostly out of money. I had invested all my savings into the business and its operations and we were surviving week to week. After working very hard and investing all of my money into the business, I had no choice but to close. I was saddened by the realization that we had failed, and even more so for the last few employee’s that had showed an enormous amount of dedication and worked extremely hard to keep us going up to then.

I took a full time job and used the income to subsidize the business. This worked for a short amount of time, but it became evident that that was not an effective long term strategy. I ultimately closed the business. There were bills that did not get paid when we ended that company and the Medallion project was officially a failure. Most of the investors had received refunds and very few lost their money.
I was able to find new funding and partners to start a new company; manufacturing and selling products we designed. We had previously contracted out the manufacturing and decided we could be successful if it was all done in house. The chassis stiffening products have been well received and we have thousands of customers who are happy and satisfied.

The Charger Medallion project failed, the company and I failed, but there is no scam about it. The rumors of the amount of money I have seen are just wrong. Most of the investment money was returned by me, until I simply was out of money.

Those are the facts. I spent a lot of time and money on the Medallion project and it did not succeed. Some of my investors lost money and I again apologize to you few folks.

John Pasemann

---

Quote:

---

When a company fails (assuming that it is not a sole propritorship) , the investors, the vendors, and the customers all lose out. That's the way it is and the way it has to be. It is not a scam if it is not intentional.

When an honest hard working mans business fails, and he has exausted all of the business' resources and closes the business, it's over.
He is now free to gain new investors an re-start fresh. It would be neither fair or legally prudent to ask the new investors to make good on debts from a defunct company.
It sucks for those who lose their investments, deposits, gift cards, etc. I'm sure it hurts worse for the owners such as John who give it all they have and lose everything.
It needs to be this way, or we would not have the great benefits we gain from the risk takers. Look at Henry Ford, and most of the great men who built the auto industry. Many failures and fresh starts happened before success.

If John started his new business with the same or similar name, that was a big mistake, and he should expect problems like this.

If I was John I would personally (outside of the new company) come to agreement with the op.
If I was the op, I would forget it and move on.

---