Musical VINs

[Tony Hoffman]

And I'll give you two examples of cars running around like this.

1) 1984 Subaru GL 2-door hatch. someone had a nice 84, perhaps
wrecked, and a 1980 body in good shape. Swapped the vin plates and
door jamb stickers, bondo'd over the stamp in the firewall. My buddy
bought the car as an 84, and we discovered the bondo cracking later.
Not that he cared, the car ran/drove fine. Still running around as of
about 6 years ago. He bought the car when it was "four" years old
(1988).

2) 1996 Mustang GT. A guy I met years ago wanted lower insurance
rates, so he swapped his 98 cobra VIN for a wrecked GT VIN from one he
bought at auction. Stupid reason to change it, if you ask me.

And, I also know of two cars that were put together with two cars
each, one wrecked front, one rear. Both used the VIN's from the rear
piece, as they had clear titles. Then again, the two guys that built
these cars never intended on selling them, either.

I actually ran into this recently, when putting a B4 90Q dash into my
82 Jetta diesel. The original dash had the VIN riveted to it. drilled
the rivets, and it now resides in the glovebox. Perhaps one day I'll
actually rivet it onto the new one.

BTW, I never endorsed the idea, just said I've heard of it.

Tony


>
> Swapping VINs is a big fat no-no.
>
> Two tales of musical VINs: