Hi AvGas,
>I am finding that today (Dec 17)
>there are some problems. I attempted to go
>into the "old" server, running Nordschlieffe 
>and was told by another fellow >in there that 
>my car was crashing the server (I was using 
>porsche 914/blue&orange)
I guess you send the guy into an infinitive loop because he was missing a car. If server crashed who restarted it? Not me...hehe
>Then I find that in the space of an hour, 
>my ranking has dropped from 18 to 27.
Quite normal. Didn't you read the base of evalution? I guess you "earned" the points on a track currently offline, so the will take into decision for ranking if the regarding tracks are online again...
>Additionally, I am experiencing quite a bit of
>lag, not from me...my >framerate is always 
>fine, but from other players. To the point 
>where they often blink out of existence 
>entirely for 3,4,5 seconds. This does not 
>bother me, unless I am right next to them. 
>Then of course I have no idea what line they 
>will take and where they will reappear. Is 
>this due to a slow connection on their end? 
>Am I not on a fast enough connection? Am I 
>winking out to any of you? Can I do anything?
Hm, I do not belive servers connection is to slowly since it is located in a computer centre with 100MBit Internet-Connection 

Maybe the other driver has a slowly connection or running some downloads in the background?
If you press "TAB" during gameplay you'll see the "distance" in ms to the player below the playername...
>Are we able to use the non-stock car skins 
>at both servers? I have everything 
>I can find.
YEP (although the "old" one has some delays in upload of new cars, since the new one has priority)
>It is frustrating for Micha and Uwe to have 
>to read such a big list in English, but I 
>know of no other way to communicate these 
>concerns. 
You're welcome as long as you accept my lousy English 
 
>Lastly, I am not sure how anybody 
>can drive that Escort. 
>It's like an angry
>bee on crack.
Hehe, practice, practice, practice...
Cheers,
  Uwe