My sincere apologies I had no idea you were young
Is this illegal?
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Cuda Al
Well-Known Member
By the letter of the law, yes. Do what you need to do and don't tell anybody, long as you are not trying to do something else illegal then nobody but the feds would care.
Alan
That VIN plate is illegal in most, if not all states in the US regardless of how it’s used.
If you have an interior fire and your VIN melts, you contact your states DMV when the car is repaired. Since it’s your car, you should be able to verify that it’s your car and that the remaining numbers match. The state will then assign you a new VIN and rivet a new state assigned VIN plate onto a couple locations on your car. That’s the legitimate way to fix that problem.
There is also ECS, they have the copyright and license to remake the door stickers etc. that bear the VIN number. But I don’t believe they can make VIN tags for the dash, although I may be wrong in that. They require proof of ownership for just the stickers too.
There’s no reason to make this political, one has nothing to do with the other.
That plate IS illegal. And riveting it to a car is also illegal. As I said, there are perfectly legitimate ways to deal with a missing VIN, and none of them will involve using that plate.
Maybe @Alaskan_TA can clarify further.
If I tried to pass off my '69 Dart as something other than what it is, I'd also have to have bogus VIN stamping on the radiator core support and the trunk lip.
Cuda Al
Well-Known Member
I was told that removing the tag from the dash pad and reaffixing it after restoration was illegal by the letter of the law, removing said pad from the car was questionable. This was from the CHP officer doing the VIN verification on my car (69 CHP Polara).
These laws were not written with restorations in mind, only auto theft.
Alan
These laws were not written with restorations in mind, only auto theft.
Alan
jos51700
Green Bearing thread connoisseur
I wouldn't be worried about Chrysler. The cars are sold and paid for.
The Feds on the other hand.....
I'd be more worried about the fact that you're providing copies of all the documentation of ownership to someone who is in the questionable business of counterfeiting things.
The Feds on the other hand.....
I'd be more worried about the fact that you're providing copies of all the documentation of ownership to someone who is in the questionable business of counterfeiting things.
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Agree to dis-agree!
This in no form resembles a real tag. Way to new looking for any late 60's or early 70's tag. If I saw this, I would run away and to me drops value!
Fake fender tags ARE available. And stamping a core support is not that hard. Would it be “perfect”? Probably not. But close enough is fine.
As for the title, that’s easy. A bill of sale and a numbers verification at the DMV will get you a new title in a lot of states. And the DMV person will not be an expert on fonts or mopar fender tag codes, so getting the title in most states would be easier than getting it past a collector.
The whole interior fire thing is suspect anyway. If you had an interior fire hot enough to melt the VIN tag, that car is MESSED UP. Like ruined. The body will be annealed and warped. And yes I’ve seen lots of car fires in my job as a firefighter. Rarely is the VIN damaged so badly it can’t be read. I know this because in the case of an abandoned car (no owner present) we often record the VIN for our reports, as stolen vehicles get torched more often than you think.
In my book, hiding the fact you had an interior fire hot enough to melt the tag might be worse than faking the numbers, that car would be 100% junk regardless of what numbers it wore.
I love my ‘74 Duster cloned over to a ‘71 Demon. But the numbers tell you exactly what it is, a ‘74 /6 Duster. It’s passing it off as real that becomes the problem.
What’s your point? That thing was still a POS when they “finished” it. Did they ever paint it? Or even put glass in it?
Roadkill is entertainment, not good practices.
And really, it’s not relevant. A car that’s burned hot enough to need a new VIN should be disclosed as such. And if you’re willing to explain that it burned, you don’t need a new VIN tag.
You’ve got me wrong. I don’t give a single flying crap about numbers matching cars. My ‘74 Duster is a full on ‘71 Demon clone. Guys paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for one car and tens of thousands for literally the next car off the line, just because of a different engine code on the VIN, is straight up stupid in my book. Especially since most OEM equipped “muscle cars” would get absolutely killed by a new V6 Honda Accord in most every performance category there is.
But if a car has been re-bodied with a modern production replacement, that should be made known up front. If a car has been burned so bad that every panel is fully annealed and the whole thing is a structural and bodywork disaster, that should be known. Dropping an engine in it and driving it around for entertainment is a far cry from actually fixing it.
Fake VIN’s and chopping VIN’s out of one car and transferring them to another allows stuff like that to be hidden. And that’s bullshit, which is why most of those practices are illegal. The reproduction body thing is a weird loophole for restoration’s, which IMO makes the whole “numbers thing” even more ridiculous. But if you play by the rules you can do what you can do. If all you’re buying is the stamped numbers on a shell that was made in Taiwan, I would want to know that too.
But I actually try not to buy numbers matching crap, because it’s cheaper and I don’t give a rip.
Super-Cuda
MOPAR .. Move Over, Plymouth Approaching Rapidly!
Going with you on this one 72bluNblu,
I have personally seen cars cloned using numbers and parts from destroyed originals to recreate a "numbers matching" car. I have then told everyone I knew about it !.
If you watched Graveyard cars and saw the remains of the Daytona they were considering restoring, that car came from my Province and was discovered on a thread I created. Those remains were found partially buried in a gravel pit , the engine was buried under a shed whose owner still had the vin and the data plate, and, the original owner still had all the paperwork who I also knew of when I was very young. One of the members of the site decided to do a road trip and ended up with all the remains and paperwork of this Daytona. It was then sold to someone in the USA (in Maine I think) who contacted Worman and company about restoring (re creating) the original. Worman, to his credit , after consulting with others in the industry decided against restoring the car. I'm willing to bet it surfaces again but now, the vin number and the story is public knowledge so it will be impossible to pass as an original.
I have personally seen cars cloned using numbers and parts from destroyed originals to recreate a "numbers matching" car. I have then told everyone I knew about it !.
If you watched Graveyard cars and saw the remains of the Daytona they were considering restoring, that car came from my Province and was discovered on a thread I created. Those remains were found partially buried in a gravel pit , the engine was buried under a shed whose owner still had the vin and the data plate, and, the original owner still had all the paperwork who I also knew of when I was very young. One of the members of the site decided to do a road trip and ended up with all the remains and paperwork of this Daytona. It was then sold to someone in the USA (in Maine I think) who contacted Worman and company about restoring (re creating) the original. Worman, to his credit , after consulting with others in the industry decided against restoring the car. I'm willing to bet it surfaces again but now, the vin number and the story is public knowledge so it will be impossible to pass as an original.
These threads never cease to amaze me. We have all sorts of people that build/restore/rebody/repaint/flip/strip/part out-and do all sorts of modifications. But when it comes to”money” the fangs come out and you see a different being. From the”for sale” to “wanted” you can see ignorance-stupidity-and the ever present”I gotta get over on him”!!! To the”I need more pics” to”Joe had that last week for less”! When we get a car that is in the sixties with low miles and good shape and I think that someone could use these parts/cars I put up a post and same old rodeo. Much easier and profitable to scrap
Dartswinger70
Well-Known Member
Yup about as unethical as selling a a rusty hulk 68 Charger for high dollar just for the dash/vin plate...
I will say that at least in these instances the car is legally owned. And I don’t have anything against the guys restoring these cars as long as they’re doing it legally and not cutting up another perfectly good (and affordable) car to make the restoration happen. If that Daytona or Charger gets rebuilt out of an AMD or Dynacorn catalog, that’s fine by me. As long as no one hides that fact from the next owner, because you know that it would effect the resale if there’s nothing original left on the car.
Now, if the the tags get swapped onto a no options Charger that a reasonable person might be able to buy and is then upcharged to its new fancy numbers, well, that’s horseshit. All the “affordable” cars become auction queens and normal folks can’t afford the hobby anymore.
The thing about those fake VIN’s is that they can also easily be used to hide stolen cars. Change one digit, put that tag on, and resell. The rest of the numbers don’t match you say? They don’t have to. How easy is it to read the partial VIN stamped on the core support? Couple coats of paint and it can be tricky. How often does someone actually hold the title up to the VIN? And when the VIN gets run, it’s usually off the tag, not the title. If the car is moved around between states the title might eventually get matched up too, “just a typo”.
This one was found, somewhere between states the VIN on the title was changed. It doesn’t say, but I’d bet it was only by a digit.
Stolen 1956 Thunderbird recovered -- 31 years later
Here’s another one, same deal
Ford pickup stolen in LA recovered after 38 years
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People back in the 70s and 80s many times replaced that E body dash assembly with a better one. They were just cars, even the hemi and 6 pac cars. Then BOOM, along comes about 1983, 4,or 5 and someone decided these old cars would be VALUABLE one day!!!! OK...... BUT Joe replaced that dash pad vin and all! I found such in a 70 Challenger RT 440-6 car, the real deal. About a year later I, also thru dumb luck, bought a 68 GTX with that car's 440-6 #'s engine. I united them. Yes I did the paint on that V code Chally and I traded it to a flipper in Tn for a rolling 66 Belvedere 426 wedge roller. He said it was a hemi car but I knew better. Big deal, I could find V code E bodies all the time. This was late 80's! I knew for a fact the flipper could get the vin repoped, he said so. I wonder how many people have paid BI $$ for bogus cars? Do we all wonder? That was HIS busness not mine, but I knew what he was doing was illegal IF he did such. I could have kept that Chally with the wrong vin and been happy but cars have always come and gone unfortunately. About that same time, I paid $1000 for a 70 Chally 318 car with a good running 440, I loved that car, way better than that orange on orange V code sucker. Sold it... everyone (Mpar guys in the KNOW) said get rid of that mongrul, never be worth nothing, you paid too much, you got screwed dumbass.
I can name other cars like a 70 Hem Cuda i bought with the vin sitting in a box of parts in the TRUNK and a SB K changed over to it. YES it was the real deal, hemi car. BUT it had the fender tag, #'s vin, and all correct #s on the body. Did I keep it and build it? NO I had 440 cars that were darn near as quick as any stock hem, and I was no racer! ha
There were other examples.
Like 72 BluNble i am glad I got over the numbers thing pretty much!! But I ain't gonna pay $5000 for a 69 318 Sat.
roller body rusted to heck !!!!!! NOR a real 69 Roadrunner roller , rusted to heck! either!ha
I can name other cars like a 70 Hem Cuda i bought with the vin sitting in a box of parts in the TRUNK and a SB K changed over to it. YES it was the real deal, hemi car. BUT it had the fender tag, #'s vin, and all correct #s on the body. Did I keep it and build it? NO I had 440 cars that were darn near as quick as any stock hem, and I was no racer! ha
There were other examples.
Like 72 BluNble i am glad I got over the numbers thing pretty much!! But I ain't gonna pay $5000 for a 69 318 Sat.
roller body rusted to heck !!!!!! NOR a real 69 Roadrunner roller , rusted to heck! either!ha
I remember a 69 GTX getting a front frame rail job from a satellite by a Chrysler dealer. Mustangs camero’s corvettes you name it back in the sixties/70’s they were not”high dollar” cars. We wrecked-rebuilt-rebodied all types of cars and dealers were not immune from fixing their customers cars. Today it seems that unless we can discredit/condemn another persons car we are not happy
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