Rebody Time - '68 L78 Camaro Firewall & Tags GM Canada Docs....

[Lee Stewart]

Originally Posted by scuncio

When you start with a firewall, you end up with a rebody. It's pretty subjective, but in this case, starting with virtually nothing except tags and a firewall makes it tough to say you've restored the original car and not recreated it. Semantics, maybe....

And just to be clear I'm glad cars like these are getting saved. I also think it's important for a future buyer to understand the history.

No semantics involved. If you start with a firewall and drive train and add all the necessary metal parts to restore it back to what was once on a dealers showroom floor - that is a restored car. That is how the law looks at it . . . . sort of

But you can get into trouble in specific cases which one I will give an example: You bought the firewall with VIN tag of a 1967 L71 427 Corvette. You have to provide a frame and engine for the car. While the car is in the body shop being restored the police do a surprise raid on the shop because they suspect the shop of shady practises. They inspect your car. It now has 3 different VINs: Firewall, Engine and Frame. What they will do is have the DMV issue a new VIN and destroy the Chevrolet VIN located on the firewall and there is nothing you can do to prevent this. You now will have when finished a 1967 L71 427 Corvette with the VIN of NYS6543 (New York State+6543th car that the DMV has issued it's own VIN for). This exact thing happened in Syracuse New York.

But if you bring in a donor car and transfer (legally) the VIN tag from the firewall car to the donor car - that is a rebody. The same holds true for taking a donor car, cutting out the firewall and replacing it with what you purchased from the seller in the original post of this thread.