A legal and ethics question

[Av8ferg]

What unethical is to deceive a potential buyer. It doesn’t matter what you do as long as you’re honest. Otherwise you are lying and that the unethical part .


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[Patcon]

@David F

In the US most of the laws governing this are state laws. So there is not one right answer and I don't even know what the laws pertaining to this are in Canada or if they are provincial laws or national laws. Here in SC there is no law against rolling an odometer forward, that I know of. It is highly illegal to roll one backward.

Now on the broader topic. If you roll one forward far enough to be 00,000, I would expect the law would frown on this too if the intent is to defraud. I have replaced odometers in cars and have tried to purchase odometers or set them close to what I replaced, but pretty much all of our titles for 10 year old cars or older say "Exempt" so the mileage is in "excess of mechanical limits". I think the OP's premise is, if the car has enough money invested in it then it's a "new" car and the odometer should reflect that but in reality I think that is too close to the line. The car is not new and it's not a super low mileage survivor. I think most states would agree and if someone were to purchase the car and make a big deal about it could become a problem.

[Captain Obvious]

No.

7 hours ago, hansmeister said:

This 280ZX is now better than new.

Says who? I'd rather have the new one.

[Pilgrim]

In the US it is not legal, unless when the vehicle is resold the owner checks the form stating that the mileage shown on the odometer is not accurate. There is no grey area on that issue under federal law.  I would consider it ethical if a similar statement was made to the buyer as well. Of course, that would not be a surprise in this case, but it is appropriate and ethical to make it clear.

[Car54280ZX]

On 9/11/2019 at 12:57 PM, hansmeister said:

In another thread, car54280zx posted pictures of a fabulous restoration.  The cost of this restoration was not stated, but another member posted that a friend paid $140,000 Cdn for a similar restoration.  This 280ZX is now better than new.

When this much is spent, is it legal and ethical to reset the odometer?

I have gone back 10 years of posts, and this question has not been asked previously.

Cost of my restoration was north of $60k USD.
 

No body work except for the air dam which took many scratches on those higher concrete parking lot stops. Damn those concrete parking lot stops.

Almost All mechanical and some interior like headliner and hatch back interior back. Since I have 25,600 miles on it and I have fuel-up records of every time I purchased fuel, I’m not inclined to roll the odometer back. I think there is more value to the car with the fueling records. 

No kidding. I have all the fuel up records with dates and mileage. I used to keep it in a book. But the book got full, so I used the back of used postal envelopes to write it all down. And I have all of those too. Like writing on a bar room napkin. ???

I have no desire to roll back the odometer. I have all the records.

[Car54280ZX]

Cost north of $60K? More than that. Yep. I’m embarrassed with the final numbers, but it sure looks like showroom again, even the underside is awesome. Approved by my wife!