[RichSchmidt]

I think he might be implying that the rusted dash was actually a rusted cowl box which is where the most well known hidden vin is located.They reproduce this part,but it doesnt have a VIN stamped in it,so the car techically looses it's hidden VIN.I know my 73 'bird has the last 6 digits stamped on the drivers side end of the subframe,but I know that I mutilated mine when I welded in my frame connectors thus removing the evidence of the subframe swap.

As for that XXXX56 car that is being mentioned,you should know that in most states,any time a VIN is tampered with,the car in question is issued a new VIN,and the new one will look nothing like the old OEM VIN.They do this when they actually find cars that turn up tagged,but are in functional condition and can be auctioned or returned to their rightfull owner.If the owner of car XXXX56 really wanted to push the issue,he could press charges against the owner of the tagged car,and the owner would have to submit the car for investigation at which time a questionable hidden vin would reveal the truth,and the bogus car could be taken out of circulation by the government,and the own would loose the car,and it would be issue a new state VIN and sold at an auction.The bad part is that the bogus car might get to keep the cowl tag unless the legit owner can prove otherwise.Another issue is that the owner of the buried car better make it pretty spiffy looking before he calls in the state since otherwise they might object to even dealing with the car as anything other then junk.



I do have one more scenerio that always raises a few eyebrows when I mention it.With supercar prices being what they are,and with such good documentation of the whereabouts of so many of the remaining cars,the last of the survivous are crawling out of the woodwork and what we see isnt pretty.We are seeing drastic measures being used to rehabilitate tube chassis race cars back into stock floorpan restorations,and even rusted and crushed hulks are being dragged out of the cornfields and being reborn with both NOS and repop parts,but the actual amount of surviving supercar sheetmetal that is unaccounted for is getting pretty slim.Now my question is,how does what we are doing effect the mental outlook of our hobby?When somebody sees a nicely restored car,they sit in it,and feel like they are holding the same steering wheel and staring out the same windshiled as somebody did 35 years ago as they banged gears for the first time in their new supercar.What they are actually doing is sitting in a very nice recreation of such a car.With an entire repop or NOS interior,and sheet metal,and almost no visable original parts,they arent getting the "feel" of a true 35 year old survivor.Now the fact is that there isnt a real shortage of very clean 69 camaro original bodies{Or other muselce car bodies},but there is a shortage of clean bodies that came with COPO numbers on their cowl tags.As such,what is a more real driving experiance?I can sit in an overly restored supercar and appreciate the work that went into it,but the fact is that if I knew that the car was made up of 80% replacment parts,I wouldnt get a very good feeling out of it.Now if somebody built a tag job car using a mint original survivor base model body with all the running gear and tags from a supercar,and then made the required trim upgrades with either the old parts from the supercar,or other real production car parts,even if the interior panels were a bit dull and scratched,and the windsheild had wiper marks on it,wouldnt it offer a more true feeling of being in the real experiance?Isnt this what restoring an old car is all about?When you stop restoring and start replacing with new and reproduction parts is there eventually a point when you cant call it a restoration,but rather a recreation?Everyone is so quick to jump on the case of some guy who swaps out tags,but they themselves would think nothing of taking a destroyed legit car and putting so much work into saving the"original" body,that when they got done they only real vintage part on the entire body were the tags and some sheet metal clippings here and there between all the new panels they hung on the car.Who is really the lesser villian,the guy who replaces he entire rusted body with a mint correctly dated original base model body,or the guy who recreates his destroyed original out of a bunch of Chinese parts,or incorrectly dated parts or parts from 10 different cars and 20 pounds of welding wire holding them all together?The line between the good guys and the bad guys gets fuzzy sometimes.