I don’t know how other states do it, but in Kansas when you buy a vehicle with an out of state title, part of the registration process involves having a state trooper verify the VIN. So perhaps the trooper noticed something iffy as part of that process.
(Personally, I’ve always found the process a little absurd. You have to take the car to the DMV along with the title and twenty dollars cash and the trooper takes the cash and signs off on the vehicle. To me it has always seemed akin to wrapping your driver’s license in a twenty when a cop pulls you over. “Is there a problem officer?”)
Maybe Ford did it differently but my '63 Falcon doesn’t have an engine VIN as far as I know. It has numbers and letters which identify the type and year it was made, and certainly one could compare it with the make and model of the car to see if it’s correct. For example, a 1963 Falcon Futura wasn’t going to have a 260. That’d be a Falcon Sprint. Although I’ve heard that in the 60s people could customize their cars at the dealer to a much greater extent than is possible today.
The car does have a chassis VIN and also a data plate on the door that has the same VIN, perhaps it was these two numbers on the Corvette which didn’t match.
This, exactly. Give the guy the car, with the understanding that it will never be driven on the road and will never have a clear title. He can haul it to car shows or drive it around his property or wash and wax it to his hearts content.
But crushing it into a pile of junk? Nobody wins in that scenario.
Yes, you do. As long as you have the title and the VIN, and the options plate, you have a 1970 AAR Barracuda. It doesn’t run, but all it need is a little restoration. I’ve seen worse.
The sad thing here: I’ve seen “VIN plate rivets”. They look like a regular rivet with a few scallops around the periphery of the head. NOT THAT I AM PROPOSING THIS: But a few minutes work on a regular rivet with a file…
–A video with no accompanying text; the very worst kind.
Thanks to Hari for spotting this and kudos to you for your comment, too. It often seems to me that this Board has gradually become so inured to this sort of thing that no one, even Mods, bothers to do anything. Happy to see some rare De-Facebook-izing here.
It’s a limited edition Cuda. “AAR Cuda” is actually the name. If it helps, the car is a replica of a race car built by Dan Gurney’s team, All American Racing.
What was strange was though the exhausts exited from the sides ( and it does look cool for doing so in those bell shaped tips ) the “tail” pipes were hook shaped because each muffler had the inlet ( from the head pipes ) and outlet on the forward sides.
The car in the photo seems to have a rake with the back being raised. I remember it handled quite well for a car of its vintage, and while a 340 cubic inch engine seems big by today’s standards, it was regarded as a small block then. What struck me ( I got the change to drive it once and really wring it out ) was how wide a power band it had. Plenty of low end torque, yet would really pull hard well past 6000 rpm. The rating of 290 gross HP was sandbagging for sure. Alas, he sold it after the arrival of children. They were rare, and known to be, then ( mid-80s ).
I could see someone wishing to re-create one as a clone, “tribute car” or whatever the term du-jour is, but selling one as such where only the VIN tag is “real” would be taboo for sure.
The Vehicle Identification Number generally matches the Engine Serial Number without necessarily being identically the same length and fields. The Ford Model A had engine serial numbers, and every Falcon sold here in Australia had an engine serial number. But unlike the VIN, it’s not always in a place thats easy to see.
The location of the compliance plate is specified by regulation here, but for convenience the manufacturer often put a copy of the VIN on the door frame, where it’s easy to read.
That’s what I was thinking; at some point, you end up with a Car of Theseus, if the engine’s been changed a time or two, and so has the body, even if at no time was all of it changed out.
So then all he has to do is get another VIN off of a wreck, stick it on his (stolen, impounded and released) car, this time using the correct rivets so that it looks original, and he’s good to go.
So? They know whose car it is. For it to be on the road, it would need a license plate, which would either be registered to him, or clearly not for the car he’s using. It’s not like they can’t track the car now that they know about it.
Not that I think not allowing him to drive it even makes any sense. What they should do is attempt to prove a chain of ownership, to show that it is not stolen, and then register it. And, if it is stolen, they should return it to the rightful owner.
There’s no point in this where keeping that car off the road entirely makes sense, let alone demolishing it. If you think something stolen, you give it back, or, if no one claims it, you auction it off.
Can’t say for sure if this particualr one has been raised beyond stock, but they did come from the factory a bit “kicked in the ass”, because of the side pipes.
I’m a Kansas attorney who has handled three of these cases on classic cars through the years. The KHP is very difficult and uncooperative. I had a very similar case involving a recently restored '62 Corvette back in the 90’s. As I remember, the VIN plate attachment was an issue and we had to sue the Kansas Department of Revenue. Ultimately, the KHP watched as my client reattached the VIN.
The most recent and most ludicrous case I had involved a 1953 pickup that the vin plate (which I believe had originally been riveted to the door) was missing. This was the only place an ID was located on this particular vehicle . The pickup had only 2 owners in the previous 50 yrs and we had their titles. We sued the KS Dept. of Revenue who agreed this was the same vehicle. A Journal Entry was issued in Johnson County District Court assigning the same VIN as the previous titles. The KHP refused to accept the Journal Entry signed by the KS Dept. of Rev. Atty and approved by the Judge. Because my client didn’t want to fight it, a different VIN from the title was assigned by the KHP which lowered the value of the vehicle.
