Musical VINs

[John Cody Forbes]

Not that I'm saying it's ok or anything, but it's only illegal if you get 
caught. Done properly (crush the donor car etc) it would be pretty hard to 
get caught. This is very very common on old race cars. I know of at least 4 
vintage Porsches with 'pedigree' that have been totaled and rebuilt on a new 
chassis. I know of one 914-6 VIN specifically that has been on 4 chassis 
that I know of, and likely more. Hell Porsche themselves (maybe they are 
allowed being the make and all) changes VINs on chassis all the time.

http://www.962.com/registry/917/index.htm - Check out how many times they 
swapped serials on these cars! Don't say these don't count - 917's were 
required to be road legal 'street' cars (with passenger seats, 'x' ammount 
of luggage space, spare tire, etc) per the ACO rules and a number of them 
have license plates on them.

-Cody Forbes


David Ullrich wrote:
> I would THINK you could possibly get a "custom/home made" car VIN
> from DMV is you substantially altered the vehicle? But yeah, VIN
> swapping is muy illegal. What you COULD do is buy another A4 and swap
> in all the TDI parts, I suppose, if money were no object.
>
> dave
> Audiless for now
> Wanted: 1987 CGT Triple White or 1981 4000 5+5 Helios Met Blue
>
> On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 9:29 AM, Mike Arman <Armanmik at earthlink.net>
> wrote:
>
>>> "Tyson Varosyan" <tigran at tigran.com>
>>> Subject: RE: FS - Grey Market 2.5L TDi Euro Model A4 (in Virginia)
>>> To: <quattro at audifans.com>
>>> Message-ID: <000601c9a5ee$24805740$6d8105c0$@com>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain;     charset="us-ascii"
>>>
>>> That's actually a pretty serious crime...
>>>
>>> Tyson Varosyan
>>
>>> Sent: Friday, March 13, 2009 6:13 PM
>>> Subject: Re: FS - Grey Market 2.5L TDi Euro Model A4 (in Virginia)
>>>
>>> Depending on your state, I've "heard" of people swapping the VIN's
>>> from another car, and registering it as that. Of course, there are
>>> legalities associated with that, but that's one way to do it.
>>
>>
>>
>> Swapping VINs is a big fat no-no.
>>
>> Two tales of musical VINs:
>>
>> 1) Bike week, Daytona. Bad-ass Harley rider decided that he was
>> going to grind off the VIN on his
>> own bike and stamp "**** YOU" as the new VIN. First time he was
>> stopped (about a week after he did
>> this), he went right to jail charged with suspicion of motor vehicle
>> theft.
>>
>> At the trial, it developed that he was in fact the legitimate owner
>> of the vehicle, so they changed
>> the charge to "possession of a motor vehicle with altered serial
>> numbers", which is a separate and
>> distinct different offense, and is also punishable. You are not
>> permitted to alter the VIN of a
>> vehicle even if you do own it.
>>
>> Where this gets interesting is that Harley went through a frenzy of
>> copyright protection some years
>> ago (to the point where they busted a single mother flea market
>> vendor who had made
>> "Harley-Davidson" FEATHER ARRANGEMENTS!) and part of this was
>> insisting that if you changed ANYTHING
>> on "your" bike it was no long a Harley-Davidson and you had to remove
>> EVERYTHING that identified it
>> as such, including the VIN. They've backed off a little since, but
>> not much.
>>
>>
>> 2) Guy I know had a Cherokee 140 in so-so shape and bought a parts
>> plane to swap the good parts from
>> the donor plane to his plane. Donor plane arrives at the airport and
>> is in rather better shape than
>> the other one. Guy decides to just swap the ID plates, after all, he
>> does own both of them, right?
>> FAA catches up with this and it costs him big bucks in legal fees to
>> stay out of prison - he also
>> loses all his FAA licenses and certifications (which puts him out of
>> business and grounds him). Ouch.
>>
>>
>> 3) I also know of situations where someone has customized a car or
>> bike and bondo'ed over the VIN on
>> the steering neck or frame. They get stopped, officer can't find the
>> VIN, vehicle gets towed away.
>> If the owner is lucky and has a good lawyer, they may get to chisel
>> the bondo off to find and reveal
>> the VIN. If the owner is not lucky (or has a very bad attitude) he
>> may go to jail just for obscuring
>> the VIN on his own vehicle.
>>
>>
>> Remember - as far as the MVB (and the FAA) are concerned, if it
>> doesn't have a number it doesn't
>> exist, so they regard numbers as sacred - (insert deity of choice)
>> help anyone who fools around with
>> their VINs!
>>
>>
>> Best Regards,
>>
>> Mike Arman
>>
>> ("If you haff noddink to hide, you haff noddink to fear . . . " Josef
>> Goebbels, 1943)
>>
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