[elcamino72]

My recommendation is always to petition the court for an order declaring you the sole rightful, legal owner of the vehicle.

This is extremely important when dealing with these desirable older vehicles. Imagine this scenario ... you buy the car, the car is desirable, you restore the car and now you are promoting the car, showing the car and possibly even looking to sell the car. The value of the car is very high because of what it is and it's getting a lot of magazine coverage. Next thing you know, you get a letter from an insurance company saying that they paid a claim on that car and that it was sent for salvage or you get a call from a former owner or a former owner's heirs that they have legal rights to the car and will be suing you to enforce those rights because they never sold the car (you can think of many reasons, ex-wife sold the car with no title, the old owner left it at a service station and "forgot" about it, etc, etc.) There could also be open encumbrances on the title such as a bank or finance company that never got paid off. The car may have been a leased car or owned by a corporate entity which was never properly dissolved and which owes taxes and if it comes out that you are now in possession of attached property, that could be sticky.

If any of these scenarios come up and you have a “washed title” or have "purchased" a title, you could lose face and worse yet lose the car. With a declaration of ownership from the court however, you will actually OWN the car and your state's DMV will be forced to give you a title for the car in your name free of any encumbrances and rights of any former “owners”.

If you are serious about buying this car, I would strongly advise you to get a title through your state Court system. Sure it costs more and takes more time, but you’ll be doing it the RIGHT way and any claims of any former owners would be resolved and you would actually have a good CLEAN title that you could negotiate with piece of mind.