So how far is too far??

[RichSchmidt]

I see a lot of post on here about bogus cars and the selling and swapping of vin tags and trim tags.I was wondering where everybody stands on this matter.When is a car a rebody and when is it a tag job?If you were to happen to stumble across a brand new with the plastic still on the seats 1969 ZL1 camaro with less then 1 mile on the clock hidden up in the loft of an old car dealership,and the only thing wrong with it was that a roof rafter torpedoed thru the middle of the car and crushed the roof and the floorpan into shrapnel,what would you do with this car?This is hypothetical of course.If somebody were to restore a bare camaro shell to absolute perfection,and then swap all the salvageable parts from the ZL1 onto this body including the subframe and even as much of the original unibody floorpan and frame structure as you could salvage,would it be a legit restoration of this car?How about if you found a ZL1 that spent it's entire life as a race car and was now sporting a tube chassis and tin can floors and firewall,but the owner sold you the original engine,and driveline parts as well as the tags along with the roof,quarter panels and door frames,and front subframe from the original car,could such a car be restored?at what point would you say the quality of the restoration would be better if the restorer would have just replaced the damaged original body with a clean one rather then repairing"everything" on the original?

A few weeks ago I saw a listing on Ebay for a 69 camaro SS396 convertable with the original numbers matching engine.The car had a missing or mangled front subframe,the floors were rotted out completley,the rockers and rear quarters were missing,and the car was stripped of every soft part.Basically the car needed full floorpans,2 full quarters,rockers,a trunk lid,2 doors,a front subframe and all the front sheetmetal just to be able to look like a restorable car.The rear end and trans were gone,as was all the top hardware I believe.So basically it would be OK for somebody to restore this car even though the only original GM steel on this car would be the doorjams and maybe the tail panel,but it would be wrong to swap on another clean body from a 6 cylinder convertable.

Right now I think you can obtain clean titles from vermont by sending in a pencil sketch of the vin of a car you possess to a "title searcher".If they do a title search and it comes up clean they will mail a clean vermont title to you in any state you reside.How long will it be until the VIN tags and trim tags from the remaining unidentified ZL1's are restamped and titles issued to cars that vanished 20 years ago?
So back to my question.How much restoration is too much before a car is considered not legit?

[njsteve]

Though it is not what you want to hear, there is a point at which you simply have to take the car off of life support and let it die an honorable death. If you take the VIN off of one body and put it on another, it is a felony. Period. If the Lawman gets tipped off to the car, you will absultely lose the car; it will be confiscated as "contraband property" under the law and you will lose all of your money and your car, and most likely get a felony conviction to boot.

If the hypothetical ZL1 with the crushed roof and floors is to be resurrected you would have to find the floors and roof from a donor car and weld it to the original ZL1, no matter how hard it is or how much $$$$ it costs. The same goes for the race car.

Without being any less cryptic in my message, I will say this about the extent of my knowledge in this area: I get paid to hunt down VIN swapped cars and the people who create them. Nuff Said?

[Unreal]

Some say you cannot mess with the cowl, but everything else is fair game. But hen, sometimes the cowl or upper dash panel need replaced, but the rest of the car is OK. Then, it's OK to change them. That sounds like the whole car, to me.

Reminds me of an old fraternity house at Pitt. There was a local ordanance that grandfathered multi-family dwellings, but if replaced, it had to be a single family residence. (an attempt by the neighborhood to get rid of the fraternity houses on Bayard Street)
Anyway, they were allowed to "remodel" so they "remodeled" the inside, by building a new house just inside the old carcass. When that was done, they "remodeled" the outside, by knocking down the old carcass, exposing the new house inside.
I might have it backwards, they might have "remodled" the outside first. But in any case, while it met the requirements of the ordanance, it was clearly a "rebody"

[matt murphy]

Rich,

You bring up a few interesting stories. First, any car restored has new parts or paint so I believe the restoration is up to the buyer if he feels that it is worth it. Not disclosing what was done in the restoration is fraud in my mind. Not so much rebodying, but I am NOT for rebodying cars.

My second point . . . The 2nd prototype BlackBird we built was bought by a 20 year old kid (by his parents) and 5 days later he turned 21 and at midnight, he and 3 other friends decided to go get their first legal drink (although they were already drinking). The police report said that they left two 180 foot blackmarks from the apartment entrance and went through an intersection at 115 mph and got the car airborn and lost it as the back end came around after the intersection. The car slid into the median and crushed the right side wheels and rocker and broke the passengers legs and then slid around and went through the other lanes and hit the left side front wheel and crushed it and then ended up with a tree 12 inches into the rear quarter in front of the rear wheel. The motor was 6 inches over to the left and the tranny was ripped off the car. Fortunately, they all lived, but the car with only 505 miles on it didn't. It was shipped to a salvage yard in GA and then another, and then another. About 10 months later I got a call from a guy in KY asking if we know about a wrecked black trans am in a salvage yard up there ?? He said it had a silver dash and a brass plate in the door jamb and thought it might be something unique and rare. I asked for the plate info and sure enough it was THE original car. He said that he was going to buy it and wanted me to turn it into a BlackBird again ( http://www.gmmginc.net/html/blackbird.html ). He said that he had a good body and that he would transfer the tags and wanted the stuff to restore it as the 2nd Blackbird prototype. I told him that the only way I would do it was if he fixed the body, no matter the cost, and sent it back down to us after it was restored as a 2001 Trans Am / WS6. He did and then sent it back to our shop (GMMG, Inc) and we then restored it with the BlackBird package. The car wasn't perfect but it was the original car.

My next story is almost to the tee to your hypothetical ZL1 disaster. In 1997 we at SLP built 100 LT4 Corvette engined SS Camaros and they sold new for just over $40,000.00. One, and I can't remember the number, was stored in the owners warehouse when a guy was driving a 15,000 pound fork lift on the second floor. I guess the second floor wasn't strong enough to hold it and the fork lift fell through the second floor . . . square on top of the LT4 SS Camaro, which had like 100 miles on it. I saw pictures of it and it landed on the top and crushed it flat on the floor, from the steering wheel back. The front end wasn't badly damaged but the tranny back was flat. NO possible chance of restoring that car. I know a few guys here at the SYC own one of those 100 cars.

[RichSchmidt]

I would have to say that a fair percentage of the nice camaros in my area are tag jobs.Not the kind that make them Yenkos,or Motions,but just the opposite.Most of the original supercars were struck by Jewish lightening back in the 70's and vanished off the face of the earth.The owners would take the insurance check and use it to make the cars into race cars.In New York,it seems that many race cars were floating around with VIN tags and no titles over the past 20 years,and as these cars are being converted back to pro street and even restored cars,the owners are scared to do a title search because they know how many of the 70's era race cars were actually built with fraudlous insurance money.Cars would change hands many times without a title since you dont need one for a drag car,and then after years and years the cars end up being fitted with tags from the nearest rustbucket 6 banger that turns up in the auto shopper.In reality,more of the supercars that went MIA were actually never destroyed in the traditional sense,but rather their owners would call them in stolen to get the insurance check to finance the conversion of the car into a drag car.Sometimes the cars were stripped of a few parts and left under a bridge,and would later be legitimatly sold through insurance auctions to racers who would build them into drag cars and retain the salvage title.Sometimes the racers would take the cars directly off the hands of a hard up youngster who couldnt afford the payments anymore.Either way the vast majority of supercars were killed in this fashion rather then by collisions or rusty deaths.I know of littleraly dozens of titleless muscle cars in my area that nobody would ever do a search on since these cars often have a very shady history.I have heard of 67's being made into 68's to fit the new title they were being fitted with,as well as at least one hardtop that is sporting a title and tag from a convertable.These guys dont care as long as the DMV will give them plates for it so they can drive it on the street.So in reality,a large number of supercars were tampered with years ago,and this isnt a problem that has surfaced recently.
Another issue is how some municipalities handle impounded cars and such.I had a perfectly good 68 camaro pass thru may hands that was tagged.It turns out that the car was impounded for overdue parking fines in New Yorks city back in the 80;s,and since it was over 10 years old it was sold as a bulk bid for scrap to a local junkyard,and was declared junk and un titleable by the state.Too bad the car was an absolutley spotless and original car with every rust free panel painted in custom pearl paint,as well as with a 468 bigblock under the hood and dana 60 rear in it,and was a turnkey and certified 9 second show car.The city wanted it crushed because it was an abandoned car that was over 10 years old.The Junk man sold it to a local racer who tagged it with the numbers from a rusty 6 cylinder just so he would have a title,then sold it for $20,000.He simply admitted that it was a 6 cylinder that was converted into a drag car.Well as it turns out the rightful owner was in jail for a while and his storage garage pushed the car out onto the street without plates on it for lack of payment,and that is how it ended up in the pound.Old cars and tag jobs tend to go hand and hand,especially in an inner city enviornment.Cops dont look at tags on stuff over 10 years old around here,so there is a wide open market for bogus cars.But that is a whole different issue anyway.

If you think what I am saying is bad,wait another 20 years.I think as it stands right now just about 3/4 of all the 5.0 mustangs ever titled in the New York City area have been declared stolen.Now to you look at it you would never guess we had such a shortage of 5.0 mustangs around here,but the DMV records show a much higher concentration of 4 cylinder LX's around/As it turns out there also seem to be a lot more really shiny black and whistling 81 buick regals around then there are Grand Nationals.You would also be amazed at th quality of workmanship that has gone into converting a plain jane 82 firebird into a dead ringer for an 89 GTA,right down to the leather seats and the 350tpi driveline.You really cant tell the differance

[427TJ]

No matter what hypothetical you can come up with (ZL-1's with a steel beam through the roof and floor, etc.) there will be some guys who cry foul and some guys who commend you for 'saving' a rare car. It's just the nature of how different people value things differently. There will always be people who disdain anything but a virgin car (numbers matching, never raced, never modified, unrestored, etc.) and others who won't care if the engine is a replacement or if the car has been painted the "wrong" color.

Did you see the '67 Shelby sell at Barrett-Jackson for $260,000? The car had a new aluminum 427 engine and had been repainted (restored) in black with white stripes--not the original color. (Mr. Shelby himself apparently signed-off on the new engine as being a 'factory' piece, probably because he sells them for his new Cobras.) That car is "supposed" to be around $60-75K but rolled off the block at just over a quarter-million dollars. There are guys who will say "I wish I could have bought that beauty" and others will say "That buyer is STUPID." Hey, it's all a matter a perspective. There is a LOT of money out there and people seem to be willing to part with vast amounts of it for a car that grabs them. Yes, that makes it harder for those of lesser means to participate in the 'hobby' yet we may benefit when the time comes for us to part with one of our cars.

Who disagrees with this statement: "I want the lowest price when I buy and the highest price when I sell."

Who wouldn't love to score a "shrink-wrapped" ZL-1 that had been sitting in a dealer's attic for 35 years? Of course we'd try to pay as little as possible for it (Shhhh, don't tell anyone!) and then shop it around to see if we can get what--a million dollars for it? Hey, let's take it to Barrett-Jackson! Yeah, that's the ticket! CHA-CHING!

Oh well. As with politics, where you stand depends on where you sit.

Oh, and that heavily critiqued Burnished Brown COPO at B-J? I'd change the color and have a ball with it, but that's just me.

[WILMASBOYL78]

I object to the term "jewish lightning" in your post. While I am completely familiar with the term and it's meaning, there are other ways to say the same thing. In my opinion there isn't any room for religious or ethnic references on this site. Using that phrase is really going too far!!

Tom Williams

[427TJ]

Well said Tom.

Who among us wouldn't want to practically 'steal' a car from some unsuspecting seller and then turn it for a hefty profit? It's really human nature and it's not limited to any one group of people.

Again: "I want to pay the lowest price when I buy and get the highest price when I sell."

Okay, back to the time-honored tradition of criticizing guys for either "asking too much for their cars" or "paying too much for their cars"!

[Salvatore]

I don't know Rich, but I am sure he didn't mean anything personal. I am Italian and always hear greaseball and underworld talk. Just is life

[RichSchmidt]

I'm sorry if I ofended you.I am half Polish,and have been going along with the jokes for over 30 years now.I figured that since the term was a era correct slang for what happened to these cars that it would be humorous.Oh well.