eBay audacity

[Arne]

Take my roof donor. It was a Series 1, but #12746 is not a very sexy number. Changing it to #4944 might improve its value a bit. Of course, now that it's "topless"...

[hls30.com]

OOOH Arne,

I had no idea you were the-as soon as you weld in the section of firewall-owner of one of the extreeemly rare low vin factory convertibles! AwSH!T, I just gave someone the next car we'll see on ebay...

Will

[Arne]

OOOH Arne,

I had no idea you were the-as soon as you weld in the section of firewall-owner of one of the extreeemly rare low vin factory convertibles! AwSH!T, I just gave someone the next car we'll see on ebay...

Will

Bwuhahahahah!:devious::devious::devious:

Oh yeah, that's me!!

[26th-Z]

Yeah, but this was done through a dealership, right? I mean the manufacturer knew about it, right?

Probably a poor example and not meant to justify the practice, but no, it was not necessarily done through a dealership and the manufacturer did it as much as private owners. There are registers of the GT-40s and the 917s. It is all documented. I recall reading about a renumbered works rally Z some time ago. I'll have to search through the archives. I would guess that Carl's site is the best registry going in the Z world. I ran across a registry of Z 432s in Japan.

[John Coffey]

Yeah, but this was done through a dealership, right? I mean the manufacturer knew about it, right?

You can buy body-in-white chassis with no US legal VIN number stamped anywhere directly from the motorsports divisions of Porsche, Nissan, BMW, Ford, and Chevrolet (to list the ones I know about). In my example above I know of at least two racing Datsun 240Zs that do not have a VIN number on the chassis. They did not come from the factory that way, part of the firewall was reinforced as part of some brake mods on one car and I don't know the story behind the other.

If, for some odd reason, someone wanted to return those cars to the street, the package for sale above would help accomplish that. In this specific situation, no one is hurt as long as the car's racing history and the VIN update is disclosed to any future buyers.

[Poindexter]

Moot. Woot.

ebay removed the item.

As I posted in #4, I was concerned that it would promote somebody to do the "presto, change-o" now it's a 4-digit VIN (perhaps with a premium price) transformed from a rusty rat-trap, and somebody would have been stung by it.

It obviously was not promoted as simply a cool keepsake, as some here have similar items displayed proudly on their garage walls. It was also reported to California DMV as a potential fraud-in-waiting, as the auction did include an official California document. They were *very* interested in hearing about this. FWIW.

Edited September 11, 2008 by Poindexter

[MikeW]

It was also reported to California DMV as a potential fraud-in-waiting, as the auction did include an official California document. They were *very* interested in hearing about this. FWIW.

It was specified as 'CA' but elsewhere 'Carolina'. Looking at the image of the title actually showed that it was from North Carolina.

[HS30-H]

As I posted in #4, I was concerned that it would promote somebody to do the "presto, change-o" now it's a 4-digit VIN (perhaps with a premium price) transformed from a rusty rat-trap, and somebody would have been stung by it.

Half the point has been missed. Did you ever stop to think just why this *identity kit* had been removed from it's original body?

There are now quite a few such identities knocking around in the UK for example, and they are the result of 'bodysnatching' activities. Rusty or crashed UK market cars are being re-shelled into imported bodies, with the UK car's identity ( often including the original section of firewall sheetmetal that carried the body serial number and prefix ) transferred onto it. That leaves the original body donor's identity going spare, and the devil will find work for idle hands to do........

Point being that the items in that ebay auction were evidence of something that had already happened, just as much as potential ammunition for something that may or may not happen in the future. To my mind, the recipient of that donor body is arguably something of a zombie car - unless the owner is completely up front about what his car really is. These things tend to get hushed up rather than broadcast.

[Poindexter]

Half the point has been missed. Did you ever stop to think just why this *identity kit* had been removed from it's original body?

There are now quite a few such identities knocking around in the UK for example, and they are the result of 'bodysnatching' activities. Rusty or crashed UK market cars are being re-shelled into imported bodies, with the UK car's identity ( often including the original section of firewall sheetmetal that carried the body serial number and prefix ) transferred onto it. That leaves the original body donor's identity going spare, and the devil will find work for idle hands to do........

Point being that the items in that ebay auction were evidence of something that had already happened, just as much as potential ammunition for something that may or may not happen in the future. To my mind, the recipient of that donor body is arguably something of a zombie car - unless the owner is completely up front about what his car really is. These things tend to get hushed up rather than broadcast.

1) I missed nothing. I can't vouch for what happened within anybody else's cranium.

2) I did in fact stop to think what happened, but since finding out precisely what happened to the "donor" car is nigh impossible from the US, I did not bother trying. It made sense- for this exercise- to presume that it must have been destroyed or rendered non-road-worthy, otherwise why remove (and sell) it's entire proof of legitimacy? There might be thousands of other reasons or outcomes but I did not have either the time, nor the inclination to think that it warranted an investigation by La Sûreté Nationale, or whatever they're calling themselves now. Clouseau was busy at the time.

What was important was announcing that a "ready-made" fraud kit was in fact being offered on ebay and not much more was known.

3) No legal activity other than display could have been inferred by possession of these items/document. Such as possession of burglars tools, merely having lock-picks, drills and hacksaws on your person *might* have some legal purpose, but please.....

quack, quack, waddle, paddle....it's a duck.

What's your exact rendering of what happened, as determinable from the available "evidence"?

Edited September 11, 2008 by Poindexter

[240ZGL]

The only reason to use a kit like that is to make a non legal car legal, whether it is a stolen car or a fraud. I just saw a red 77 on Ebay that has 72 paper on it. It is clearly not a 72 and the guy, when called on it, basically says oh well. Here in Calif. you get a well deserved jail sentence for that kind of crap.

[Poindexter]

The only reason to use a kit like that is to make a non legal car legal, whether it is a stolen car or a fraud. I just saw a red 77 on Ebay that has 72 paper on it. It is clearly not a 72 and the guy, when called on it, basically says oh well. Here in Calif. you get a well deserved jail sentence for that kind of crap.

Some people in this thread did mention certain limited circumstances where it might be otherwise impossible to get a perfectly good but undocumented car back on the road. This is a real shame, but are there no other ways to go about this? Send a rubbing of the VIN to Alabama I've heard. Who knows?

I had the EXACT problem with my Z- which had no paperwork and had been completely purged from the NY DMV computer system in the years it was stored off the road. Since there is no title for such older cars, I had to mail multiple pages of forms (to tie you into Federal charges of mail fraud too if there was any monkey-business) and even submit affadavits from both myself *and* the seller- who luckily was still my friend these many years later- and we both had to spend nearly 2 whole days in the NYC DMV office (*shudder* what a nightmare!) so that they could first issue a temp registration, and only then begin to perform a physical record search- which took almost 75 days- before I could re-register in NJ- which is another matter completely! :devious:

So in circumstances which are limited to the one described above, and like a father passing down his Z to his son, where all parties were trusted, I would barely hesitate to do a little creative welding- as long as everyone up and down the line would know about it, and no nefarious schemes were involved or planned. But there has to be a better way than becoming an "imposter" and potentially exposing yourself to criminal charges.

[geezer]

It's no surprise that Ebay ended this auction early. The seller may not be doing anything illegal by listing with Ebay, but I'm sure he violated Ebay policy. All Ebay can do is issue a warning and end the auction, but the cat is out of the bag now and everyone in the Z community knows where to buy this "set". Laws are sure to be broken by transporting this "set" across international boundaries, but the chances of being charged are slim. It is even illegal for rosette rivets used to secure VIN plates to be sold or shipped internationally, so why should the sale of this, what I would describe as government regulated documentation be allowed to be offered for international sale? There is enough dishonesty in the vague and outright inaccurate descriptions of vehicles sold on the net sight unseen already, without allowing this practice a foothold in our hobby. Deplorable!