Interesting VIN number on 68 Barracuda

i always enjoy and welcome lawyer jokes... here's a few of my favorites:

"what do you do when you have three lawyers up to their necks in concrete? get more concrete."

"why did a famous research laboratory chance from using rats to using lawyers in their experiments? because they found that the laboratory workers were growing to attached to the rats."


here's the reason for the "long winded" and "meandering" way i brought up the issue i had over the VIN number on the red barracuda: the internet is still pretty much of "the wild west" when it comes to legal rules. generally speaking, a person cannot be sued for defamation over comments they post "on line." however, these legal rules are not very well established and being the cautious lawyer that i am, i did not want to post any "opinion" or statement about the subject car without first asking my fellow FABO members to look at the ad and submit their own comments about my concerns. i was confident in my assessment that this red barracuda does not have the correct dash with accompanying VIN number for the style of the car, however, i wanted others to look at what i was looking at and hopefully come to the same conclusion as i had. it is black letter law in all 50 states that "if the statement made is true" a suit for defamation cannot succeed.

my second goal was to - hopefully - generate a discussion about how to spot suspect VIN numbers or other important information about a collector car that one might be considering purchasing. i believe i achieved some level of awareness to this cautionary point.

comments about whether or not my observation is of any importance to the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles are also good to read. there are vast differences in how strict vehicle registration laws are in all the states. the North and New England tend to be very strict about vehicles. the South and mid-west not so much. my understanding is that california is also strict.

i hope some of my comments here on FABO are of value - especially to "younger folks" or those just getting into the collector car hobby. while a suspect VIN number might not be of any concern to some civil servant putting a rubber stamp on a title application, it might be of great concern to a future buyer of that vehicle. and in the worst case, selling such a vehicle when one knows about a VIN issue might land the person in the middle of an expensive and nasty law suit brought by a VERY unhappy buyer.

as i stated previously, i still think this car is a problem for the present dealership notwithstanding their very "legalistic" disclaimer. as the famous phrase goes from the Nixon impeachment hearings: "what did you know and when did you know it?" sometimes in a law suit, how that question is answered will determine whether the person being sued wins or loses the case.