Why have none of you guys in the know responded to my post? Is it still the same and a touchy suBject?

"I personally have absolutely no interest in restoring a car with the intentions of having it judged in an OE or any other kind of class, but here is my take on all of this.

Back in 2000 I bought a second owner 1968 Hemi Charger that was all numbers matching with history to the original owner that need restoration. I began looking around for a judging manual for OEM cars. I just wanted to have a guideline to make sure I didn't spend time and money doing something wrong during resto to this great car. I found that the venue that people were using was the Mopar Nationals and that there was no judging manual available to "regular people." This meaning that the ones judging these cars either just had their own notes or a manual that they would not "share" with outsiders. To add insult to injury, the majority of the judges were also people in the business of restoring others csrs for profit and were often judging car THEY had restored. Obviously I was not the only one that thought this was totally wrong but no one seemed to be doing anything about it.

The only other experience I had ever had with a situation like this was with Corvettes I used to own. Since 1974 NCRS has produced and sold judging manuals for the cars they judge on an OEM level. Anyone could buy them and they incouraged people that want to participate to buy them prior to starting their resto. Everything was spelled out regarding what was right and what points were awarded right or wrong.

I know that since then there is now a new judging format with a written judging manual available for this purpose for Mopars, however from the sounds of this thread, it seems that there is STILL a lot of laditude for individual judges to make their OWN decisions regarding scoring rather than adhereing to black and white written judging rules. I hope I am wrong for the sake of the people having cars judged."