I recently purchased a 66 gt convertible from a gentleman off eBay. Here'a my problem. The car was restored by him and at least one previous owner. The vin# on the fender apron looks to be a poor re stamp and both fender aprons have been replaced(I've looked at a couple of other pics of vin#'s and they are slightly different than this one, plus it doesn't have the star stamped at both ends). To make matters worse, it's from New York and he never registered the car, and he claims that the previous owner who he purchased it from about a year ago is deceased. He also claims that the he thinks the car was last registered around 1978 in New York. I did find a company that can re title the vehicle and then sell the vehicle back to me so I can title it here in Maryland( they can do this with just a notarized bill of sale and the vin#, which I find interesting). I have several concerns and hope someone on here can help answer them. 1) I've researched a little and found out there's no Marti reports for this year car, so how do I verify that the vin# on the car is an authentic number and not just a made up one? 2) If there are companies out there that can re issue titles without the old ones, whats to stop someone from changing a vin# to show it's an "A" code car and whatever other changes they want to make? I don't think this guy was shady and I believe he is honest, but because there's no way to verify the vin that I have found(if I'm wrong, please correct me) what's to stop a person from making up a vin# number for the 64-66 years? I mean theoretically, someone could replace the fender aprons on a 66, stamp whatever color, trans, engine and dso they wanted, use one of these companies to obtain a registration and letter of title, and sell the car as such with no questions asked. I hope I'm missing something here and someone can give a me a reasonable explanation as to why this wouldn't be possible. FYI, the car I bought does show all the characteristics of a GT down to the smallest points, though I know there's no way to be sure outside of tracing it's origin which I would have a better chance of hitting the lottery!
If the door data plate is original to the car then it could show the info but if not then it's not possible to come up with all the info.
I imagine you're talking about Broadway Title or similar agency. There really isn't anything stopping someone from "making up info" about an older car, especially one you can't verify info from a production report (Marti) or able to trace owners back. If they followed the pattern of a Ford VIN from that era (11 digits) then yes they could make a fake VIN up. It may not be the guy you bought the car from but could be from the deceased owner or whoever he had the work done by.
It really looks like you have no way of verifying the car. The stamped VINs if they really look that bad may throw a flag up at the DMV if you need an inspection to register the car.
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1968 Mustang coupe, Acapulco Blue, 289 2v, C-4, Power Steering.
Hopefully a 1969 convertible or Sportsroof (non Mach or Boss) for next Mustang project
Trying to find my father's 1973 Mustang Grande he bought brand new. 3F04F126773 last known registration and title was in New Jersey, 1982.
You can buy the data plates stamped with whatever you want so i guess its possible to get a new plate and title and say the car is something it is not. If you need to get a title you can go through the court system also. When i bought my car it didn't have a title so my Dad(he's a lawyer) went through the court here somehow and got one. He said it was really easy and i think the only cost was the court costs. Court costs could be expensive though.
You can buy the data plates stamped with whatever you want so i guess its possible to get a new plate and title and say the car is something it is not. If you need to get a title you can go through the court system also. When i bought my car it didn't have a title so my Dad(he's a lawyer) went through the court here somehow and got one. He said it was really easy and i think the only cost was the court costs. Court costs could be expensive though.
If you're not an attorney or know one either then you'd have to factor that cost in too.
Broadway Title is what most people I hear of using but some states won't accept a title from them anymore. They realizeed they are a "title farm".
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1968 Mustang coupe, Acapulco Blue, 289 2v, C-4, Power Steering.
Hopefully a 1969 convertible or Sportsroof (non Mach or Boss) for next Mustang project
Trying to find my father's 1973 Mustang Grande he bought brand new. 3F04F126773 last known registration and title was in New Jersey, 1982.
If this car was last registered in NY, then no problem getting a new registration from NY. I have done this twice. I'm a NY residence and it took a little time, (4-6 weeks) beforeI received the registration in the mail. You will need to pencil trace the vin number so it can be read clearly, fill out the paper work, get insurance for the car, have a dollar ammount you paid for the car, pay sales tax and etc. When you do all this at the counter and your done, turn the plates back in, get a receipt for the plates to cancel the insurance. You will be issued a temp reg and the real one will arrive in about 4-6 weeks if your car was not reported stolen or there is not another car already registered with the same vin numbers. I know, this all sounds like a lot to do, but it works. I just did it on this car and believe me I'm not driving it, but I wanted it in my name. Kodakgallery.com*Join now and receive beautiful photographic prints from your camera
Hello. As far as what it seems that your main question is goes, a car that hasn't been registered for at least 20 years could be a made up vin, and there is no way that this would ever come to light, barring the unlikely possibilities of them having made up a vin that has the same 1st, 2nd and last 6 digits of a car that actually exists, and someone else has been keeping up the registration on that car, and, the person with the car with the bogus vin tries to register it in the same state that the real car is already registered in, or, if it's the vin of a car that is known to have been completely destroyed, as in went off the deck of a ship in the middle of the North Sea or exploded into pea-sized shrapnel at the track on television or something. There are ways to establish that the car sitting in front of you is not the car that left the factory with the vin it now has, but, there is virtually no way to establish that the factory never built a car with that vin. It's kind of a ' dirty little secret' in the vintage car world. Everyone knows that, but nobody talks about it, because it casts a shadow of doubt over every vintage car out there that doesn't have original, independently verifiable documentation. Hope that helps.
Having the person I bought it from register it in NY really doesn't address my issue of altering the VIN# unless it is stolen or destroyed.
Even if the vin# is not stolen, there's no way to verify that someone didn't change some of the numbers or letters to indicate something that it was not originally.
Contacting Ford is useless because they don't have any info for 66 mustangs.
Veronica, after some more research on this matter, and with the information you provided, it appears my concerns are valid. You did indicate that there are ways to establish that the car sitting in front of you is not the car that left the factory with the vin it now has. How can I determine if this applies to my car?
BTW the the eBay auction number is 300300648015 if anyone would like to see the car and vin#
The guy does list all the info that would be on the door data plate. Not saying that if he has the plate somewhere it was originally from that car but he had to get that info from somewhere.
The other thing I saw now looking at the auction is the car is a Metuchen built car. There were buck tags with those cars, mounted near the passenger side hood hinge in most cases originally, if the car still has that the VIN and some other bits of info would be on that too. Of course the buck tag could have been taken from another car too.
The VIN he gives for that car does match the way Ford did VINs, what I mean is no extra characters and the letter and digit characters are in the correct areas of the VIN so it does "make sense".
Still not saying it couldn't have been made up but there's really no way of telling.
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1968 Mustang coupe, Acapulco Blue, 289 2v, C-4, Power Steering.
Hopefully a 1969 convertible or Sportsroof (non Mach or Boss) for next Mustang project
Trying to find my father's 1973 Mustang Grande he bought brand new. 3F04F126773 last known registration and title was in New Jersey, 1982.
Veronica, after some more research on this matter, and with the information you provided, it appears my concerns are valid. You did indicate that there are ways to establish that the car sitting in front of you is not the car that left the factory with the vin it now has. How can I determine if this applies to my car?
Hi again. You would have to start from establishing that all three vin stampings on the car were not put there by Ford. Then, it's down to establishing, from scratch, what the car really is, and how badly it was misrepresented. Check to see if it's been clipped, if it's a re-body, that sort of thing. You might have actually caught a break on that one. I get the impression that this car might actually be a 65 model car. I couldn't really say that's based on anything in particular, but, that's where I would start my investigation. That's a 65 shifter ball. You can pull the instrument cluster out a little bit and see if the opening that it fits into is flat across the bottom. If it is, it's definitely a 65 model car. Check and see if the emergency brake cables hang down under the frame rails back near the wheels, or if they go between the floor and the frame rails. If they go between, it's a 65. Check date codes that are stamped on the sheet metal. There won't be a year stamped on the sheet metal, but if the entire car is showing dates a few months away from what the build date should have been, based on the last six digits of the vin, and you can approximate that withing a couple of days based on other, known cars, and the date stampings are mostly consistant with each other, that's a problem. You'll need to go over the car with a fine-toothed comb, gather all the information you can on what's actually there, and compare that to what should be there, based on that vin. It's a pretty tedious process, but, it can be done. Personally, I hope it turns out to be a real car that's had a lot of work done on it. Lawsuits aren't much fun for anybody. Good luck.
Absolutely, VINs can be made up and it is unlikely that anyone not wishing to delve into the details would ever find out. You would likely have to have two cars with the same VIN trying to register their cars in the same state. The states rarely know much about the VINs especially on older cars. I have seen cars registered with what were casting numbers from an engine which were generic to thousands of cars. When we pointed that out to the DMV they had no interest in changing it to something meaningful since they would first have to admit that they made a mistake.
If someone wants to be crooked there are plenty of opportunities which is why a buyer has to be wary of the possibilities. My '66 coupe was titled but unregistered for 20 years. I went to the local DMV with my 20 year old registration paper and they re-activated the long expired plate and registered the car without ever having seen the plate or the car in 20 years. What's to keep a crook from putting such a plate and/or registration on anything he wanted to call a Mustang?
There was a thread here a few weeks ago from someone who had bought a car whose Mustang VIN had apparently been generated by the state of Oklahoma to title a former salvage car. http://www.allfordmustangs.com/forum...n-replica.html I don't know that Ford did it, but my brother boutht a new Toyota a few years ago here in NM and he couldn't title it since somehow Toyota had built two cars with the same VIN. I think NM invented a VIN for that car also so they wouldn't miss all the registration taxes due. Likewise, you can build a car from parts, such as but not limited to a kit car, and then apply to the NM DMV to issue it a VIN.
66gt, I would say the vin number on your car is correct, but Maybe the ither numbers telling what your car really is isn't. Do what Veronica says, investigate your car. I did the same to my 66 fastback. It will take some time but you will have correct answers. Motor mounts can tell what year/month your car was made. Sheet metal dates too. Take off your sill plates and carpet and look for a date stamped on the rocher panle. If it's the original dashpad, there will be a full date stamped under it. I got lucky with my 66, when I took out the original instrument cluster I found the cars build sheet wrapped around the main wire harness, BINGO! Now I know everything about my 66 fatsback. When I bought mine there was no motor/tranny and no door plate. It did have the two vin # on both aprons, but that doesn't tell you what the car came with. The build sheet does. Before I found the build sheet I was able to figure out my car was made within a couple of days in October 1965, but I was guessing on the tranny. Was it a 3 or 4 speed. The build sheet said code 5. You can easy register your car, but it may be something else that you don't want to hear. Greg
Thanks for all the input. I guess the first thing is to make sure I don't have any problems registering the car in my state. After that, well I'm going to enjoy driving it this summer. My last question to all of you out there (on this subject) is: given what I know about the car and how it was advertised and assuming I don't find anything that would prove it's not a GT, would any of you see a reason why I couldn't continue to claim it's a GT and sell it as such? I know it's one thing to claim a car is something when you know it's not, but, when you buy it under a certain premise and know of nothing to contradict that (even though you may not be able to document it), would anyone here have a problem sleeping at night? BTW I have no plans to sell this car, but as all of us know, things happen.
66 vin# issues need help 
I couldn't really say that's based on anything in particular, but, that's where I would start my investigation. That's a 65 shifter ball. You can pull the instrument cluster out a little bit and see if the opening that it fits into is flat across the bottom. If it is, it's definitely a 65 model car. Check and see if the emergency brake cables hang down under the frame rails back near the wheels, or if they go between the floor and the frame rails. If they go between, it's a 65. Check date codes that are stamped on the sheet metal. There won't be a year stamped on the sheet metal, but if the entire car is showing dates a few months away from what the build date should have been, based on the last six digits of the vin, and you can approximate that withing a couple of days based on other, known cars, and the date stampings are mostly consistant with each other, that's a problem. You'll need to go over the car with a fine-toothed comb, gather all the information you can on what's actually there, and compare that to what should be there, based on that vin. It's a pretty tedious process, but, it can be done. Personally, I hope it turns out to be a real car that's had a lot of work done on it. Lawsuits aren't much fun for anybody. Good luck. 
