[njsteve]

Some free legal advice: call your local police and report it stolen NOW! Explain that it's not just a car, its an historic automobile/classic car/TV show prop and worth a bunch of money. With the police report in hand, then contact your local FBI office and ask for the squad that handles cargo theft and ITSMV (Interstate Transportation of Stolen Motor Vehicles). Be persistant with the FBI guys dont just talk to the duty agent and file a report, ask for the person who handles the above mentioned crimes. Usually it only takes one call from them to the shippers and the car gets delivered asap. What these bozos are doing is a common scam where the shippers will just drag you along for weeks and then they demand more money for the car or you never see it again, or they just stop answering your calls. Once the car is in NCIC (the national crime/stolen car database) fax a copy of the police report to the shippers. Then see how fast they car shows up.

Once that car was overdue and there was no sensible explaination (like bad weather) they no longer have your authorization to be possessing that car. The civil violation would be called "conversion". By retaining possession of your car and not giving it to you, they have converted it to their own use. In a civil lawsuit you would then get the punitive damages plus the value of the car. (these types of case used to happen a lot in the past where you'd go to a new car dealer to look at new cars, and give them the keys to your old car for them to evaluate it for a trade in...and they then "lose" your keys, forcing you to hang around for hours on end) That resulted in a bunch of car dealers having to pay a bunch of money in damages to the car owners, who's cars, the Court made them buy. Well, enough rambling for the moment, call the cops now!