Yahoo Autos The Politics Behind Getting a Long Stolen Muscle Car Returned
The muscle car world has seen quite a few stories involving stolen classics. Specifically, cars that were stolen long ago have been getting returned to the owners they were taken from, but at the expense of an owner that purchased the stolen car legally and had no involvement in the original robbery. It's a sticky situation.
Most recently, a man brought his Corvette to a car show only to have someone point out a discrepancy with the Vehicle Identification Number. The oddity led authorities to discover the car was stolen decades earlier. The current "owner" was forced to return the car to its rightful owner. And a couple years ago, a man whose car was stolen–again, many years earlier–found that a man nearby had it but claimed he had bought it legally and would not give it back. After some legal wrangling, he surrendered the car but not before it was stripped.
I have represented a man caught in the middle of something like this: The car he had bought was "cloned." That is, someone had put the VIN tag from a wrecked vehicle onto a stolen car and then sold it to him. The car's title matched the VIN you could see through the windshield, but it did not match the VINs stashed elsewhere on the car. First important note: the VIN can always be found in more than one spot on a car these days. When in doubt, check the other VINs.
One day my client found a state trooper on his doorstep and another under his car who announced, "This is the one we're looking for." They took his car away and we were forced to sue the seller, an action in which we were successful. But not all ugly stories have happy endings. Let's examine the two stories from the first paragraph.
The 1964 Corvette was brought to a car show by its purported owner from Red Bluff, California. Someone noticed that the VIN was not correct for a Corvette. One wonders how this had escaped the attention of the owner since most classic car folks know how VINs work and all of the great info you can get from decoding the VIN. The owner decided to look into the matter and brought the Corvette to the local police department and asked them for help. They quickly located the proper VIN and traced it, revealing that the car had been stolen in 1976 from its owner in Anaheim. Someone swapped out the VIN tag and resold it. Eventually, the car was bought for the current "owner" by his wife from a now-defunct dealer. The police broke the news to the man that the car had to be returned to its rightful owner who had since moved to Arizona and had long since given up all hope of ever seeing her car again.
That story reminded me of Rick White, a man whose 1970 Plymouth 'Cuda had been stolen from his garage in 2001. He was the original owner of the car and had used it for drag racing. That is, until it was stolen. In 2014, he received a cryptic letter saying his car's storage bill was unpaid. He quickly followed up but found out that whoever had his car had paid the bill, retrieved the car, and it was gone again. He called the police but they told him they could not intervene because the statute of limitations had run on the theft claim. To make the story weirder, the man who had the car was contacted by local media outlets and he gave strange statements to them about how he "owned" the car because he had a bill of sale. After White filed another police report, someone realized the police COULD act. Even if the theft was outdated, the car was still stolen property. The police seized the car but by this point, it had been stripped.
A thief cannot transfer title to a car he has stolen.
There are a couple of takeaways here. First: A thief cannot transfer title to a car he has stolen. If I stole it, I do not own it. So, if you "buy" a car from a thief, you are not acquiring title to the car even if you gain possession of it. And, even if you get a Certificate of Title to the car, you still do not have "legal" title to the car. This point confuses many people but the Certificate of Title is merely a piece of paper showing you who the state THINKS is the owner of the car. But the state did not investigate the claim made by the title applicant. They merely saw an application for title and issued a piece of paper. In Michigan, and most states, the Certificate of Title is merely "evidence of ownership." It might help you in proving ownership but it is not definitive. And if you did not have good title to the car when you applied for your title, the Certificate of Title gives you nothing.
This goes back to a concept called Warranty of Title. A seller who sells a car (or any good for that matter) to a buyer does not need to say, "I own this and guarantee that my ownership rights are good and are transferred to you." Simply selling you the car means that I am warranting–guaranteeing–that I had legal ownership and that I was transferring that to you. But, if I do not own what I am selling (i.e., it is stolen) then I cannot give you a good warrantable title. All you are getting from me when I give you the car is possession. And good luck with that.
But wait, you ask. Isn't possession nine-tenths of the law? The adage, which is not a law, speaks to situations where there is little or no evidence other than two bickering parties fighting over who owns something. He said–she said, but neither party can prove ownership.
In the two cases above, each of the original owners of the cars could prove their ownership. They had Certificates of Title and, presumably, other evidence of how they had acquired the title and so on when they first got the cars. The later possessors of the cars in question had shaky arguments at best. The Corvette "owner" had a title with the wrong VIN on it. The 'Cuda guy claimed he had a "Bill of Sale" but admitted he had no title. And why didn't the 'Cuda's guy have a title? Because the 'Cuda was stolen.
The Corvette "owner" who had to give up the car got shafted here. Not by the original owner and not by the police but by the defunct dealer who appeared to miss or ignore the mis-matched VIN. The 'Cuda owner–at best–should have been on notice that he had a problem when someone offered to sell him a 1970 'Cuda without a title. Or, for all we know, he is the one who stole it. And anyone who steals a Mopar from a man's own garage deserves a spot in a very dark corner of Hell.
How to avoid such a situation? Easy. Before you buy a collector car of this sort, do your homework. If you are not an expert on the car you are buying, find someone who is and ask them to check the car out for you. It's called an "inspection." Some attorneys on the internet mention this from time to time. Most people assume the inspection is for mechanical issues but part of it should always involve checking the VINs under the car against the one under the windshield.
My client did not inspect his cloned vehicle because he was buying from one of the largest dealers in Metropolitan Detroit. It was also a late-model vehicle with no other warning flags so I am not sure how many people would have caught it in that instance. But the Corvette buyer should certainly have checked the VIN to see that if it was correct for a Corvette. And the buyer of the 'Cuda? We don't know enough about his story to feel sorry for him.
Steve Lehto is a writer and attorney from Michigan. He specializes in Lemon Law and frequently writes about cars and the law. His most recent books include Preston Tucker and His Battle to Build the Car of Tomorrow, and Dodge Daytona and Plymouth Superbird: Design, Development, Production and Competition. He also has a podcast where he talks about these things.
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