Selling Trim Tags ?????

[RichSchmidt]

What if I painstakingly unearthed that buried car when the tags were intact,and began replacng every single part on the car until it was restored.Since they make every single part including roof structures,firewall and cowl structures,frame channels,and full floorpans,it could be possible to resurect that car by simply welding one piece at a time of repop parts onto the existing upper cowl box with the vin and trim tag attached.How far is too far?In this day and age,ANY camaro can be restored with enough work,even one that was crushed in a car crusher.How do we draw the line.If replacing the frame of a car is too much and goes too far,then how about a mint original body shell with a backhalf job or a tube chassis under it,but mint roof,1/4's and firewal with all the numbers?Is it O.K. to fix such a car with repop or donor parts.My own car is pretty far gone,but it is still a real car.The roof could stand to be replaced because of many small dents and waves,both rear 1'4's were shot when I started on it,as wer both doors and fenders,and the front subframe was bent so bad that the wheels couldnt be pointed in the same direction even after substantial repair work.I replaced all the sheet metal,and replaced the subframe with a donor one.It is now a conglomeration of about 5 different cars.The firewall is hacked out along with the hidden VIN because it has spent most of it's life as a race car,so what should somebody do with such a car.The floors and rear rails were mint as were most of the internal structures,but it sure as heck cant be call"restored to original".

I would like to hear some opinions on how far we should go to restore a car.Back 20 years ago when some guy might have pulled the trim and VIN tag off his Yenko because he wrapped it around a pole,the thought was that a really dented car is worthless or unfixable.Today such a car might be considered an easy fix and be a very desirable find.

[Racefan]

Rich, here is another interesting question that has come up before. What if you were to dig the car up and restore it. Then call the Highway Patrol to verify the hidden VIN to title the car. Then on the search, they find that the VIN in question is already registered to someone!? What happens then? Who is in trouble? What if the orignal perpetrator has sold the car as real for a large sum of money and the new owner is completely convinced his car is real because it has all the right trim/VIN tags? So, the question comes back to which car is REAL? The one that you unearthed or the completely frame off beauty that sports the tags? According to the law the freshly unearthed car was the true car ending in VIN XXXX56. I wish I could say that this is only a "what if"......... but I can say with some degree of certainty that the situation is completely real. The only thing that is a "what if" is that no one has dug up the original XXXX56 YET. I have a gut feeling that there are more cars out there just like this, and there are those "in the know" who know about the questionable nature of them. But, no one is talking. I don't mean to bring this up to cause trouble or point fingers (that is why I don't mention any more specifics) but only to say that we can complain about the 'vette guys and so forth--but no group is without its skeletons. It, unfortunately, is a part of the game as soon as the values become what they have become.

[Rick H]

So let me se if I have this straight. I just found a 69 L78 that has been in storage for 20 years and is in excellent shape except of one area. The dash has rotted out because of the moisture that sits on them.

Show of hands that can relate to this scenerio.

Now I have to pass on the car because I can not legally remove the VIN tag, replace the dash panel and then reattach the VIN tag to the replacement panel? Technically the new dash is not original to the car.

Am I reading some of these responses correctly that once the VIN is attached to the car it may never come off the original metal it was attached?

Where do you draw the line on this??


Rick H.

[SamLBInj]

There really is no discussion. Its fraud, Period. How about this, Find a nice 1967, 327 engined convertible camaro, put on a new 4K tag found or made wherever, Plop in a L78 and all the nice big block stuff, now take the car to a non title state and register it and insure it as a SS , now sell it to a title state and the car is now transformed with documents...legal?

[WILMASBOYL78]

[ QUOTE ]
There really is no discussion. Its fraud, Period. How about this, Find a nice 1967, 327 engined convertible camaro, put on a new 4K tag found or made wherever, Plop in a L78 and all the nice big block stuff, now take the car to a non title state and register it and insure it as a SS , now sell it to a title state and the car is now transformed with documents...legal?

[/ QUOTE ]


Sam, that's some system! I have heard of laundering money, but that's "car laundering". This hobby is headed for a reckoning!!

wilma

[Racefan]

[ QUOTE ]
So let me se if I have this straight. I just found a 69 L78 that has been in storage for 20 years and is in excellent shape except of one area. The dash has rotted out because of the moisture that sits on them.

Show of hands that can relate to this scenerio.

Now I have to pass on the car because I can not legally remove the VIN tag, replace the dash panel and then reattach the VIN tag to the replacement panel? Technically the new dash is not original to the car.

Am I reading some of these responses correctly that once the VIN is attached to the car it may never come off the original metal it was attached?

Where do you draw the line on this??


Rick H.

[/ QUOTE ]

Difference is, did the tage get replaced into the original car again with matching hidden VINs? The I'd say you are safe. But, what if you decided to not pursue redoing your car that you found and bought a decent Plain Jane and moved all of your equipment to it (including tags)--that is what I'm talking about. However, you are probably going to get some criticism and questions about the legitimacy of the car with the non-correct rivets holding the tags in. All I am saying is that there is NO GOOD REASON to purchase or sell trim/VIN tags UNLESS you happen to find the person who owns the correct shell those tags should be in. And, chances are, if they were taken out at some point the car probably isn't even around anymore.

[PeteLeathersac]

Remember in the Ferrari crowd when the 250 Gto's were first hot, a guy had a real Gto, bought a regular 250, faked it as a Gto and included the tags off his own real car, sold the fake and kept the real car to drive with regular 250 tags? . Using this same logic, a well known and documented Chevy that no one questions as genuine in all ways could be bought and another car slipped under the tags....the job is so perfect and the car previously so well documented that no one ever suspects or looks at the facts again....the car is sold and the crook cruises in his genuine car telling all it's a clone with a big smile on his face? . Sounds crazy....kind of a reverse engineered clone....but possible?
On jumping tags around, whatever federal or varying laws by State or Provinces say, accepted rules of thumb by enthusists like the group here can be practised and the fraud people will be against these ideas making them easy to spot in the crowd? ~ Pete

[Rick H]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
So let me se if I have this straight. I just found a 69 L78 that has been in storage for 20 years and is in excellent shape except of one area. The dash has rotted out because of the moisture that sits on them.

Show of hands that can relate to this scenerio.

Now I have to pass on the car because I can not legally remove the VIN tag, replace the dash panel and then reattach the VIN tag to the replacement panel? Technically the new dash is not original to the car.

Am I reading some of these responses correctly that once the VIN is attached to the car it may never come off the original metal it was attached?

Where do you draw the line on this??


Rick H.

[/ QUOTE ]

Difference is, did the tage get replaced into the original car again with matching hidden VINs? The I'd say you are safe. But, what if you decided to not pursue redoing your car that you found and bought a decent Plain Jane and moved all of your equipment to it (including tags)--that is what I'm talking about. However, you are probably going to get some criticism and questions about the legitimacy of the car with the non-correct rivets holding the tags in. All I am saying is that there is NO GOOD REASON to purchase or sell trim/VIN tags UNLESS you happen to find the person who owns the correct shell those tags should be in. And, chances are, if they were taken out at some point the car probably isn't even around anymore.

[/ QUOTE ]

Please reread what I wrote. All I said that was wrong was a rusted dash panel. Nothing more. I never said anything about adding a different tag to make the car what it is not as Sam illustrates above. Just replacing the dash panel nothing more.

Rick H

[Racefan]

Please re-read what I wrote. I understood your question and point. In my opinion, you would be in the clear because your hidden VIN would match the VIN on the tag you moved. All I said about your swapping the VIN tag to the new dash panel was that you would probably get some questions for it not having the correct rivets, etc. But, they could easily be cleared up by showing the hidden VIN.

[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.