To Rob Ida, there’s no such thing as good enough. While his 1940 Mercury three-window coupe, built for owner Jack Kiely, earned near-universal praise and a Best of Show Design Award from Ford at the 2015 SEMA Show, Rob still saw room for improvement. That quest for perfection, and bit of baggage mishandling by the airlines, has now caused the hand-crafted taillamp lenses and surrounds to go missing.
As Rob posted to Facebook on November 19:
So I have been working on these hand-made tail lights and lenses for quite some time. After SEMA I removed them and brought them home to have them chromed and try to make better lenses. I brought them on the airplane yesterday for the photo shoot. United Airlines made me check them with luggage and they lost them. I’m totally heartbroken as they are irreplaceable hand made parts.
Here’s what we know so far: Rob was flying from Newark, New Jersey to Ontario, California, via Denver, Colorado, for a photo shoot with the Merc in the California desert. The plane’s overhead compartments were full, so Rob checked the taillamps, which were wrapped in white, red and blue U.S. Postal Service Priority Mail cardboard packaging. The parts made the plane in Newark, but somewhere in between Denver and Ontario the trail goes cold.
As Rob related to us, the cardboard outer wrap didn’t have an address, but instead received a bar-code label that links back to Rob’s ticket and flight information. Based on a conversation with a baggage handler, Rob believes the item was mistaken for a piece of mail, perhaps placed aside with the bar code down. As Rob was told by the airline, “searching” for a lost bag doesn’t physically involve looking, but instead relies on the assumption that the bar code will turn up at some point in the not-too-distant future.
Rob estimates that he’s got about 300 hours of work into the taillamps, a process that included designing the assemblies, designing the lenses, casting the lenses (multiple times), casting the surrounds (in plaster, then Styrofoam, then aluminum) and finishing the completed pieces. As shown at SEMA, the surrounds were polished aluminum, but Rob believed they’d look better when chrome plated. Likewise, he felt that a few more attempts at casting the actual lenses would deliver a better product.
According to United Airline’s baggage liability disclaimer, compensation for lost baggage on domestic flights is limited to “fair market value at the time of loss,” a dollar amount not to exceed $3,500 per customer. United allows customers to buy insurance (at a cost of $1 per $100) for items exceeding the $3,500 value threshold, up to a maximum value of $5,000, but Rob was never offered the supplemental coverage.
Money aside, the loss is a major setback for both Rob and the car. He’s looking for suggestions from anyone with ties to the airline industry, or anyone with experience handling baggage. Can you help Rob get his missing taillamp assemblies back?
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