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The laws are made to keep people from stealing 2004 Jeep Cherokees and Honda Accords, and re-VINing them, and then selling to someone as a used car. Lumping old cars into this classification is ridiculous, preposterous even, and why would law enforcement even care? I'd like to see someone try to find law enforcement that would give a hoot regarding a '68 Camullet re-body... A lawyer maybe, but even that is a stretch.
It's not like the Camullet re-bodyer is running a chop-shop or a criminal syndicate.
That being said, once again, isn't someone just re-assembling a car from parts when re-bodying, just the same as if every panel is replaced on a car? It makes no sense to not think about it like this. Taking this further, you guys talk about "Black-listing", etc... That's really none of your business, is it? Why stick your nose into someone else's business? I don't understand...
njsteve has been officially deputized by the VIN po-po... The "Fife" of the VIN!
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1) If they are all the same car then I should be able to get an original one of the 69 ZL1s for the same price as one of the 100,000 plus 6 cyl cars. -It's about the pedigree and provenance. That is what makes the cars, or any antique, or collectible item, valuable. It is the ability to verify the pedigree of an object back to it's birth. If it doesn't matter to you that your car was an original COPO, and it may or may not be now, that's fine, but it doesn't give you the legal right to recreate/rebody one and pass it off as the real deal. That is what the law is there to protect against. VIN swapping is a form of counterfeiting in essense, if not in reality.
2) Just because it is far easier to take the VIN off of one body and rivet it onto another one, instead of expensively restoring and replacing every single rusted original panel doesn't make it legal, just easy. If restoring these cars was easy everybody would have a 1000 point car out there.
3) I can put it this way: I could paint you a copy of a Van Gogh, slap on a duplicate signature and try to sell it to you for $17,000,000, but that doesn't make it worth what a real Van Gogh is worth. And I would definitely get prosecuted for that efort.
4) As for the law being directed at newer cars only, you would be very surprised at the reality of the situation. It is rare to see an old fashioned, chop shop'n, VIN swapp'n, car stealin' case get prosecuted at the federal level. It's all about the value of these cars now and the press coverage. If someone rebodies a $800,000 ZL1 by taking the VIN off of a crushed, burnt hulk and just slaps that VIN on a 6 cyl body, that is basically a "shooting fish in a barrel" criminal case for a federal prosecutor. They would be foaming at the mouth at the prospect of being in the news for one of their cases. It's an easy conviction with a whole lot of publicity potential (read that as career advancement for those lawyer types). Just look at the publicity that Barrett Jackson Ramchargers Hemi Cuda case got, and that is just a civil case, not a criminal one. (Even though it's not a VIN case but a defamation/misrepresentation case)
I am more than happy to take my official oath of office as Barney "Anti-VIN Swappin" Fife.
Barney sez: "Nip VIN Swappin in the bud"
Nip it, Nip it, Nip it!!!
