proper yenko rebody? (in new hemmings)

[racegump]

I think that if a car has honest repairs, no matter how bad it was, it is restored. To me that means stripping it to bare metal and replacing the items that are needed, not taking the easy route and switching the cowl/tag, etc. If a car is so rusted, burned, or wrecked to the point that no good metal is left it is junk and should be considered gone. To use the tag or cowl from a car like that and try to claim it as restored or re-bodied is a joke.

[MultiMopars]

[ QUOTE ]
I think that if a car has honest repairs , no matter how bad it was, it is restored. To me that means stripping it to bare metal and replacing the items that are needed, not taking the easy route and switching the cowl/tag, etc. If a car is so rusted, burned, or wrecked to the point that no good metal is left it is junk and should be considered gone. To use the tag or cowl from a car like that and try to claim it as restored or re-bodied is a joke.

[/ QUOTE ]

WHO decides what an "honest repair" is?
If I assume you mean a restoration other than by rebody (if anyone can define when it takes place) then I guess it is safe to assume that you would be satisfied with a burned, rusted, damaged car that was repaired by a novice welding parts from 15 different cars togather in their garage?
You would not rather have one that all of the correct parts were simply transfered to a complete, undamaged factory built donor car just as the factory did to build that same car that is what the V.I.N. trim tag indicates?

Statements like this are often used for the rebody arguement. However, using this same LOGIC 99% of these old muscle cars "restored" (either by what some refer to as the conventional way OR rebody) in the last 10 years or more would never have taken place. When you figure that MOST of these cars were rusted, damaged, incomplete, to the point that when parked they were basially "totaled" in reality. When the values of these cars began to rise in value people started pulling cars out of junkyards, backyards, garages, fields, and barns.

People complain that a resurrected car by means of rebody is wrong, but some of those same people will say that it is restored if they take one of these rust buckets and bolt or weld on parts from SEVERAL other old donor cars or new repo parts. So, once again look at my other post above, WHO in the hobby DEFINES when a "restoration" ends and a "rebody" begins. Apparently EVERYBODY does and forms their own opinions.

Some say that it is done simply for profit. WHO is the mind reader in this case? How do they know what is in the mind of the person that owns the car.

Many people in the hobby currently own cars that were at one time considered totaled, or in other words worth less when restored than the cost to do so.

[black69]

Here is a link to a car that is close to a rebody, yet still is not.

http://agar.homestead.com/myridesbarrelcuda.html

I would give it a rebody pass. The owner is very up front on pictures before it was painted (baremetal firewall/cowl), its donor material (not a complete roller), the tons of work done to salvage it. I would consider it a legal car.

now is this maybe also a proper rebody by some? or is that even more metal replacement than this car? note the owner of this cuda in the link is not calling his car a rebody.

[MultiMopars]

[ QUOTE ]
Here is a link to a car that is close to a rebody, yet still is not.

http://agar.homestead.com/myridesbarrelcuda.html

I would give it a rebody pass. The owner is very up front on pictures before it was painted (baremetal firewall/cowl), its donor material (not a complete roller), the tons of work done to salvage it. I would consider it a legal car.

now is this maybe also a proper rebody by some? or is that even more metal replacement than this car? note the owner of this cuda in the link is not calling his car a rebody.

[/ QUOTE ]

That rustbucket has been beat to death on Moparts.com for two years now. There were PLENTY of donor parts involved with the car, but according to the guy that did the work and from the pictures it was not a rebody, but rather a patchwork quilt of many donor parts.
I hope he had a REALLY level floor and all of the body dimension measurements and USED them when he welded everything back togather or it will fold up like an accordian upon impact.

This is a good example of how DISCLOSURE that everyone thinks should take place with a rebody but SELDOM happens with a "restoration" such as this, can KILL the saleability of a car. From all the comments on Moparts.com, even though the guy spent a lot of money and time on the car, it has been shunned. It WAS for sale for a long time with no luck.

If ALL of the "restored" cars out there showed the resto process (and many are just like this one) do you think they would bring the money they did upon sale if the buyer saw them? I think not.

[camarojoe]

Speaking of beaten to death....there have been at least a dozen threads on this here over the years, with similar (if not identical) points and counterpoints. I don't think theres anything to say that hasn't already been said many times before.

Everyone has their own belief as to what a rebody is and their feelings on one. It never ends well, and no one ever seems to come to an agreement.

[Keith Tedford]

If the market knows exactly what has been replaced, then the will set the price for the car. Re-bodied cars will never be as valuable as those with all their original parts. However when we deal with rare cars, people seem to be willing to still pay a lot of money.

[Xplantdad]

[ QUOTE ]
Speaking of beaten to death....there have been at least a dozen threads on this here over the years, with similar (if not identical) points and counterpoints. I don't think theres anything to say that hasn't already been said many times before.

Everyone has their own belief as to what a rebody is and their feelings on one. It never ends well, and no one ever seems to come to an agreement.



[/ QUOTE ]

I like the picture!

[Chateau Slate 66]

[RichSchmidt]

We have gone down this road many times before.The issue is that it defies legal logic that an automobile can be recreated using all replacement or donor parts and the job would actually cost less then what the car is worth.Basically a car is totalled when it cost more to fix then it is worth,so the state issues a salvage title so that the VIN can't just be swapped to a stolen body since stealing another car would be the only way to fix a totaled car for less then the cost of simply buying another car.

In the collector car world,things get fuzzy.While a $250,000 car can techanically be totally destroyed,the car itself is almost no different then thousands of $10,000 cars that still exist,so it is possible that someone could fix a destroyed $250k car by using a body from a $10k car and swapping the VIN and related parts.This defies logic to the legal world since what we are really saying is that it is the VIN number and not the actually metal of the car that makes it worth so much.When this happens,it just makes sense that these valubale VINs are being kept in working order by being transported around by new body shells.

Forgeries are rampant in the collector world.Coins,Hummels,stamps,guns,war stuff.It is all illegal.The fact that car restorers can forge a valuable car by using the body of a less valuebale car is like saying I can recreate loads of super rare coins by taking coins of a similar vintage and restamping them in my bogus stamping machine.

A rebody is illegal for a different reason then just the federal laws pertaining to VIN numbers,it is illegal because what is touted as a mint condition collectable is actually a counterfiet.That constitute fraud regardless of where the VIN tag came from.

As long as VIN numbers and not the condition of the vehicle determine value the old VIN swithceroo fraud will be a battle.

[talwell]

Quite simply put a rebody is illegal. Rich hit it on the head that it is illegal and the end result is a counterfeit.

I am sure that there must exist some legal method to allow the transfer of a VIN to another body based on the current condition of the original body. Although I am sure this exists, I have never seen anyone provide any legal documentation to validate that the transfer of the vin to the new body they are selling was done correctly. With this being said, I would conclude that all the rebodied cars are illegal and the DMV would must likely have the person who created the car arrested. In NYC we have a section of the police department called Auto Crime. If these guys caught you doing this or caught you with a car that has had the vin swapped I am very sure you would be arrested and the car confiscated. In NYC they do not tolerate any of these questionable swaps.