This is sad to hear from Stromberg 97........ Speedway Motors' Bill Smith died at the weekend. Having lost not one, but two fathers in my lifetime, our sincere condolences go out to his family, of course. I expect everyone has a Bill Smith story to tell. Here are mine. You can make your own judgements. When we first started Stromberg, Bill Smith said he would only stock them if he had sole US distribution at 60% discount. Then he offered to buy us, for a sum less than we had invested. Then he bought some new 97s and I can only assume shipped them offshore where they copied most of it - even our plastic float. Then finally in 2011 he threatened court action to challenge our trademark rights unless we agreed to Speedway registering '9-super-7', which the USPTO had rejected because it was too close to our own 97 mark. We had no problem with this, though it still cost us a 5-figure legal sum. This was money we had set aside for Big carb R&D. RIP Bill.
