Happy B-Day Mr. Shadowman

[Lorenzo]

Happy Birthday Bill, See ya at the Rally.

 

[FENZO]

Wishing you a happy one Bill. Thanks for all the help!

 

[dbk]

Forgiveness is man's deepest need and highest achievement. -- Horace Bushnell

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

Here's a question for Team Shadowman. It's a yes or no question so it should be easy to answer.

Do you honestly believe the following car was crashed

on the highway cruising in the slow lane between 60-65 mph and then approximately 3 miles later I am tossed off the highway

?

Like I said, yes or no question. I've already asked this question to a couple of you guys that incessantly bring Bill up in an attempt to start some sort of wider movement for his return (which you'd think after 5 months of completely failing to do, you'd take the hint on the consensus view of objective observers), and the lack of an answer tells me you don't like the answer. You obviously know it.

I can tell you the unfortunate story of being a passenger in a Heritage GT that was totaled after losing control shifting hard into second at between 60-70 mph. We hit a huge curb, broke a wheel off, punctured the actual BBS wheel with a broken control arm (never even seen that), smashed into three trees, etc. Despite the cracked frame and $100,000 estimate to repair that car, it looked like a toddler kicked it in comparison. I have literally never seen a wrecked Ford GT as bad as Ray's, and that includes cars crashed deep into the triple digits. You can imagine the amount of secretly wrecked forum member cars I've seen.

Now we can get all hypothetical, but you're grown men. If you find a child alone in the yard with a pile of bricks, one in each hand, standing in front of a smashed window, do you draw the obvious conclusion, or do you say "Gee I wonder" when he asks "Oh my gosh, what happened to the window!" Same situation, but with a boost gauge strapped through the window of a 1000rwhp car on a huge straight stretch of road in the middle of the night with an incomparably destroyed car.

Accidents happen. I don't think anyone would care at all if the answer was "I was going really fast and lost it," or "I hit the throttle and the thing just got away from me." Maybe they'd think twice about sending their car someone, but certainly they'd understand that sometimes carnage is the price of playing at the margins with high hp cars. There's a lot of members who feel their intelligence was insulted by the bullshit explanation given in a patently obvious attempt to get out in front of the situation as a victim. I had a guy who was off the forum for a while come back to see the pictures go in and delete his responses to the original accident thread because he felt totally had by said explanation.

So there's a number of problems here.

1. The fact the obvious, long standing, well known rule I started early on that you don't post pics of people's wrecked Ford GTs unless it's your own was broken for self-serving purposes. Didn't ask the owner, didn't care. Can you imagine how you'd feel if you were the owner, especially if you got a text message from me asking if you authorized pics of your wadded up car on the internet?

2. The fact that the circumstances given surrounding the the wreck could only be believed by the most naive or hopelessly optimistic person.

3. The fact that there were repeated ridiculous attempts to fault other people by asserting there was some problem with the car that turned it into a frisbee that just magically flew off the road. Give me a break. Do you think if there was a chance in hell there was some mystical mechanical problem caused by someone else that would cause a car to just hurl itself into oblivion, that wouldn't have been priority number 1 to prove post-wreck by both the owner and the guy who wrecked it?

4. The fact I specifically heard from members of Team Shadowman that there was a repeated claim that his insurance had made the car owner whole when that was patently untrue. Not hard to figure out when the insurance agent is a forum member. When pressed on this topic, much like the answer to the "do you believe the circumstances of the wreck" question, clammed up.

5. The fact there was this repeated assertion that Discovery Automotive had been a sponsor from the beginning. After being a member for nearly two years, Bony and I agreed in December 2007 that Shadowman was operating as a vendor under the radar, and it was May of 2008 when he paid one of the 2 vendor fees he paid in 4+ years. This is not a big deal (and what's the over under on jobs it took to pay for the $2k total in sponsorship fees? 1? 1.5?), but again, don't be disrespectful and fabricate situations that didn't exist to make it look like you're a victim.

6. The fact that Chip Beck went out of his way to try and get this handled amicably only to be repeatedly be made to look like an ass. He went way out of his way trying to make fun time happy time on the internet and basically got pissed on for his trouble. At the moment of truth, Chip was ignored for days for who knows what reason.

7. The hypocritical assertion that the site is bigger than any one person as a rationale for being allowed back on, while simultaneously sniping, complaining, and having people do proxy work expressly to make one person an issue bigger than the site.

8. The fact that even when time had passed Bill attempted to pass off as current a several year old, completely unrelated post from another site as evidence of insurrection based on his banning. I don't even know where to start with that one but can only say that again, tell me what the problem is, but don't insult my intelligence with fabrications.

And I'm not even getting into all the stuff that reared it's head after the incident. I've heard a couple people say there's a desire to have a trial by fire. Yeah, that's cool. I'm sure a bunch of members that come here for enjoyment want to read the back and forth about how various people have wronged each other and why a guy is banned at the Lambo forum and why he has this dispute or that one with this supplier or that one. Especially considering, if nothing else, everything regarding this situation and certain persons behavior has become an asymmetric information fest of epic proportions.

Now, I get it. I'm the evil dictator here. I can only imagine the fantastical scenarios that have painted behind the scenes regarding this subject that will not die. But keep in mind, I've taken heat on the internet over this despite my personal feelings on the subject. I've been photoshopped for "protecting" Bill. Chip and I both tried with no success to get the guys at Lambo Power to quit trying to burn Bill at the stake for an accident because it just brought an onslaught of morons over here. I've kept this stuff off this website despite the fact that 99.9% of the car-interested internet snickered and said "What a complete and total load of bullshit" when they read the account of this incident. I have nothing to gain in this scenario but a whole bunch of pain in the ass. And let me tell you, the genie only comes out of the bottle. She doesn't go back in. I will be deleting kids with Honda Civics that find this link off one of the 30,000 google results until the site disappears.

So after all that, I'm not averse to Bill coming back after:

1. Apologizing to Ray for posting pictures of his car after wrecking it without his consent.

2. Coming clean on the situation of the wreck. If he doesn't remember, that's understandable. Just an admission that there's no way the car just up and flew off the road at 60 mph and ended up looking like it had been crashed at 150 mph, managing to chop a tree in half 20+ feet off the ground.

3. An admission that it was inappropriate to try and shuck responsibility by blaming other people.

4. The listing of the Discovery Automotive address so there is no confusion as to whether or not it is an actual business of record.

5. An apology to Chip for bailing when Chip wasted endless hours of his time trying to mediate a solution.

So that's it. And if this situation is not agreeable to any of you, you can get my phone number from Herb (Kingman) or Soroush. You can PM me. You can email me at webmaster@fordgtforum.com. If we're going to perpetually have the same 6-7 guys dredging up threads, repeating the word "Shadowman" over and over, then I will offer my services in the starting of a new, Shadowman-based Ford GT web forum. Because we're done with it here. I respect the loyalty, but I'm not going to tolerate this stuff anymore. I hate even writing this post because it's just more stupid dramatics that the vast majority of people have no interest in.

 

[GTdrummer]

I refuse to weigh in until I hear from Dr. Harms.

 

[BlackICE]

I wasn't there so I can say what really happened; however an eyewitness driving near Shadowman at the time as evidenced in the police report stated that he observed Shadowman driving between 65-70 MPH and then abruptly veered right and traveled down the embankment. Then add to this the California Highway Patrol (CHP) completed their onsite and computer analysis of the accident and that too shows that Shadowman was traveling approx 65 MPH and then veered right and down a 35 foot embankment. My guess to why the car looks so bad is that it not only flew off the road at 65 MPH, it fell down 35' as well.

The CHP is very strict on "street racing", if there was any clues to would support that Bill was excessively speeding, he would have been cited and most likely jailed! Note that a young girl in CA was in the hospital for a car running her over and she was still cited for jay walking.

If he wasn't speeding then does anyone really believe that Shadowman had a death wish and wanted to kill himself, or that is he is that crappy of a driver that it lost control on a strait section of highway? I don't.

 

[fjpikul]

Well, Happy Birthday anyway Billy boy.

 

[GTdrummer]

God knows I am not taking sides and some of the conduct Dave mentions is very troubling as well as what he, Ray and Chip were put through. However, as an old lawyer who spent part of his career defending design case where folks were killed, maimed and "worse" I can tell you I have seen cars that looked worse than the one in these pictures in cases where the speed was 60--70.

 

[dbk]

If he wasn't speeding then does anyone really believe that Shadowman had a death wish and wanted to kill himself, or that is he is that crappy of a driver that it lost control on a strait section of highway? I don't.

Like I said, boost gauge taped to the car. You're being exceedingly naive to assume a person that has IN WRITING previously detailed verifying boost levels manually on the street wasn't doing exactly that. I don't care what a witness states, they are completely unreliable in this scenario. If you're willing to admit that's what he was doing in a 1000 rear wheel horsepower Turbo Ford GT, then you have to acknowledge he wasn't putzing 60 mph. You know as well as I do that the instant that thing hits boost it's easily capable of going from 60 to over a 100 in 2-3 seconds tops. Doubt they model for that. How else do you make sure it's making boost if you don't make it...make boost? As you say, surely he didn't he just turn off a cliff for fun. And unless there's 4 people fibbing to me, the car chopped a tree in half 20+ feet in the air.

There is plenty of time to be wasted hypothesizing, or you could just take the glaringly obvious explanation.

 

[GTdrummer]

Like I said, boost gauge taped to the car. You're being exceedingly naive to assume a person that has IN WRITING previously detailed verifying boost levels manually on the street wasn't doing exactly that. I don't care what a witness states, they are completely unreliable in this scenario.

Correct. A witness assessment of how fast someone was driving is generally not admissible.

 

[BlackICE]

Correct. A witness assessment of how fast someone was driving is generally not admissible.

I am not an attorney, so I will not dispute this. A question, would the police report and the words of the CHP be admissible evidence?

 

[dbk]

This one dies with this PM I received:

Not like you need to hear it, but I agree with your post wholeheartedly. People make mistakes but the only ones who earn my respect are the ones who own them and take responsibility. I have resisted this topic because frankly it is none of my business and I can not think of one thing to say that has not already been said much better by you and Ray. As a regular around here I wish this would go away. I mean if you like the guy so much keep using him/keep in touch with him, but why push him on the rest on us. Every single time I see his name on a thread it is like nails on a chalkboard.

Believe me, this user represents the VAST majority of people that have contacted me on the subject (which is a very small number to begin with because few people care beyond the incessant thread bumping), in a total wipeout, and that's with me biting my proverbial tongue to the point it bleeds for months.