[RichSchmidt]

It is all a scam.In New Jesey,there is no technical certification required to take someone's money to fix the mechanicals or the body damage on their car.80% of all the shops in my area have technicians with no credentials whatsoever{I worked in the busness for 10 years and made it to"A" tech without any training except airconditioning certification).All the local government cares about is that the shop has the right paperwork,and that only refers to having the shop in a properly zoned area and having any environmental issues taken care of{spraybooth if you want to paint and stuff like that}.Salvage titled cars can be repaired by any do it yourselfer in his back yard[but he cant charge somebody money for it},and if the state inspector feels the repairs are satisfactory,and no stolen parts were used the car will get a registerable title issued,but it will always bear the "S" to warn any future buyers.If a car isnt totaled by an insurance company,it doenst matter how bad the body damage is after an accident,there will be no official record of it.If the owner has only liabilty insurance on the car,and he wraps it around a tree and makes it into a horseshoe,and his cousin bubba fixes it by chaining it to the same tree and driving it backwards until the frame is straight and then hanging junkyard or stolen panels on the car and spraying shiny paint on it in his backyad,there will be no record of it,and the police dont even have to write an accident report if the owner doesnt want one.So a car that appears "virgin" could actually be the worst wreck of them all.What is really scary is that if such a car were ever in an accident later on,and the shoddy repairs caused a problem,the owner or repairman could just shrug it off and say,they dont know anything about it,and that the repairs must have been made by another owner at some other point in the car's life.
As for clipped cars,or rebodies,I tend to agree that from a restoration standpoint,a rebody might be more corect.If You find a Copo Camaro in a barn,and it is a 100% complete all numbers matching car that hasnt been driven in 30 years,but is rotted to death,would a future admirer of this car get a more accurate image of the car if it had welded on patch panels,and obvious signs of repair work,or would it be more correct if a clean rust free 307 powerd body were used which still wore all the original seamseal,and had all the original body fitment issues of an actual factory car?
I believe I posted once before about the 396 convertable Camaro that was on Ebay a few months ago.This car needed a front subframe,floors,inner and outer rockers,a tail panel,full 1/4's,inner and outer rear wheelhouses,and trunk floor and dropoffs,and was nothing more then a bare body shell and a complete numbers matching engine,but no other driveline parts.There will be no paper trail following tis car,and regardless of if it gets rebodied or gets the Goodmark book thown at it,somewhere down the line,this car will turn up as a pristine low mileage original on some vintage car trader's lot,and top dollar will be paid for it and nobody will be the wiser.It is the nature of the beast.
Here is one to get you all mad.A friend of mine works at BMW,and he fixes cars that are damaged during transport.He claims that hanging quarter panels and even roof skins on brand new cars before they go to the dealers is common place,and that the cars are sold as new and undamaged cars.He showed me one car with over 800 dents in it from a hailstorm while on the boat,and the shop employs a paintless dent removal expert who worked out every single dimple in that car{and it looked like a 2 ton golfball}without putting any paint on it,and the car was on it's way to a happy home after a 1 week delay in the body shop.A few years back another friend who works at a body shop showed me photos of a brenad new minivan that fell off a car carrier,and was brought to his independent shop to be fixed.They got paid $17,000 to replace every piece of sheet metal on this thing except one door frame,and about half of the floor.A new roof and roof structrue was added along with every pice of sheet metal,and a partial unibody,and this thing went on the dealer lot as a brand new vehicle.The same shop had him put a new frame under a pickup truck that was smashed when being used as a Demo,and it too was sold as an unrepaired vehicle with no record of the damage.So maybe that ZL1 camaro was rebodied by the dealer back in 1969?[yeah right}