I'm opening a different sort of discussion. Over the years, I see a lot of cars for sale and when I'm interested in one, I always ask for the VIN number along with other bits of information. In some rare cases, I find cars with obviously fake VIN numbers. For example, classic Maseratis before the adoption of the international long VIN system have the typical AMxxx type of VIN coding (with some few exceptions?). So when I see a Maserati with VIN "M3555181M" then I get sceptical. How do you guys handle these situations? Do you quietly steer away from the sale, or do you take some extra steps?
Ask for photos of all the usual locations it's found in the car. They can still fake that too but you're on much better ground and then you can try to find out about the cars history. Not too sure Walter is ever coming back to assist with that though. Ask your question in a Ferrari thread instead! He's still there.
Oh I've got lots of photos! The dealers are happy to give them to me. Even the license of the car has the fake VIN written on it (so its even legal!).
This particular one claims to be a Merak. I've counted three Meraks with fake VINs so far and one Indy.
I ran into a Ghibli spyder conversion coming out of Germany that had a fake VIN. In this particular car the VIN was changed on both the data plate and the welded number on the frame to correspond to a real Ghibli spyder. Someone spent some time trying to make it look real. I guess they were not expecting I would be showing up to inspect it I am a bit surprised anyone would risk faking the VIN on a Merak. The financial gains do not seem to justify the risks. Actually the risks do not justify it on any car, unless you like to be wearing stripes for some years. Ivan
If he doesn't -- it's all your fault. We all have our idiosyncrasies, but the guy did have some positive things to add here.
He decided to go away for a while over I guess a photo of Fred & Barney in their Rockmobile racer from the Flintstones which I did not post. Clearly THAT was outrageous ...
Well go and look at the car find the real chassis number and send it to the rightful owner. Yeah it's probably stolen. The trouble is that the recovery laws in places like Germany suck. I know a guy who owned a Ghibli Cup car which he bought while he was working in Germany. he got transferred back to the USA and so he let a local dealer sell the car for hi. But before it was sold the dealer went bankrupt and the local government seized everything on the lot including this car and sold it off. He apparently has zero recourse. WTF, they don't have registration records in Germany that would point to the real owner?
oh that is a shame really... I can see how this could happen, the ownership of the car was transferred to the dealer, so he could sell it easily on behalf of the client. Thus, when the dealer's company went bust, the car was seen as an asset of the dealer. we've seen this happen in a slightly different way. People, to avoid taxes or to hide from the government, they make a deal with the dealer, who gives them the car but withhold the ownership. In paper, the car appears to be owned by the dealer but in practice someone else owns the car. But if the dealer ever goes bust, then people see their cars being taken away (even though they paid for them) because the ownership title is with the dealer. anyway, long story....
