Cali. looks to the intent to deceive
Actually, Warren, that's exactly what happens when you change a VIN on a car; the person who switches the VIN around has just proven their intent to deceive. In the case of the original subject of this discussion thread, the Ebay Alpine donor car that received the Tiger parts, the VIN was intentionally swapped from the Tiger to the Alpine, making the resulting car that which it never was, nor was ever intended to be. I realize that the seller has been up front in his ad that this is what had been done, but that still does not right the wrong that has been committed. A car is "born," if you will, with a particular VIN and it is, by law, expected to carry that VIN from its initial construction all the way until its ultimate demise, be that by accident or by just falling into a state of total disrepair to the point to where it needs to be crushed. In the eyes of the law, this is the way it is.
VINs don't get switched by accident or for no reason at all; in every case like this, it was deliberately done. One must wonder about what would motivate a person to do that. Is it to "save" a rare car or is it for financial gain...or perhaps both? First of all, in my opinion, there is no "saving" of a rare car if you have to throw the original tub away and use another body. At the point when the VIN off of the "rare" (read "more valuable" and/or "more desirable or marketable") car is removed and placed on another body that is being used as a donor, the unbroken line of history following the "rare" tub that originally carried that VIN is broken; it can no longer be honestly represented as the "rare car" that it is purported to be. It simply becomes, from that point forward, a facsimile of that "rare car" that is purely masquerading as that "rare car," simply because the tub that is now in use to supposedly preserve the "rare" model was never intended by the factory to be that model. So, why would a person expend this much effort and risk getting into some serious trouble with the authorities? It's simple...money is the prime motivator. That person is either trying to protect his initial investment, or he's trying to, as we say around here, "stick a fat hog;" i.e. trying to make a profit by intentionally re-creating a car that, by all rights, is dead. I don't know about you guys, but I don't know too many people who would go to this much trouble just for some measure of self-satisfaction of being able to say "I saved that rare car from the crusher." No, the ultimate in satisfaction for that person comes when it's time to sell the car on to an unsuspecting buyer. How many of these sellers do you guys think disclose the fact that they had the VIN swapped over because the original car was just too far gone to save?
No matter what we are being told to the contrary, a person who is engaged in the act of swapping VINs between cars is breaking the law...period. In the end, we all pay the price for that kind of nonsense. True enough, Alpines and Tigers do look a whole lot alike, and there are people on this forum who are under the mistaken notion that "all Tigers are modified Alpines." If that were true, then by definition Rootes would have had to have taken completed Alpine shells, removed their VIN tags, then deconstructed them to the point of being able to add the Tiger-only parts, then re-VIN them as Tigers. Of course, to any reasonable person, this notion is absolutely laughable. I would love to be present while watching and listening to someone of that opinion try to explain themselves and their notions to the Rootes engineers of the day. They would have most assuredly been summarily escorted out of the building and placed in a rubber truck!!!
Warren is correct when he states that "The Shelby guys Tiger Guys and everyone with a collector (car) should be interested in not letting a fraud continue or occur..." Let's face it; with the rising price of Tigers in the marketplace, the Tiger community saw this coming and created the TAC program in an effort to expose the fraudulent vehicles and keep them from tainting the Tiger market. This is no different than SAAC keeping tabs on every single Cobra and Shelby out there; their main thrust is to keep the frauds from being passed off as the real thing. Eventually, this hurts the entire market and can have an impact on the value of the "real" cars of each model.
The bottom line here is that VIN switching, though it may be being done "every day all over the country" as one of our outspoken Tiger-bashing posters puts it, is still as illegal as the day is long. Anyone who tells you any different is kidding themselves and, in the worst case scenario, could be trying to fool others. Shame on those who participate in this practice.