Can you imagine wrecking your new muscle car just three weeks after taking delivery? That’s apparently what happened with this 1970 Plymouth Barracuda that is now listed for sale after finally being released from the original owner’s grasp. He then used the carcass as his personal parts car in the years after the accident for building up a replacement vehicle, and now the remains are listed here on eBay with the seller acknowledging that the value is tied to the VIN number and a few small parts. Amazingly, it has one bid to $1,000 at the moment and no reserve.
Now, to be fair, I think what the original owner did was a smart move: buy the wreck back from insurance and transfer the nearly-new components over to a good body / chassis. Of course, most of us would have then scrapped the wrecked body when it was still fairly new and after all of the parts of value had been pillaged, as who could have possibly predicted that a VIN number alone with make a wreck like this worth anything decades later? I don’t expect it to sell for much over the current bid, but it’s still amazing to me what enthusiasts will pay for a clean VIN attached to the right car.
Obviously, this thing is mangled beyond belief. It’s not returning to the road, despite the fact it looks to have worn some great colors when new. The seller notes it was originally a 340, 4-speed car, so I can see why that VIN may be useful to someone building a car that is in need of a “boost” in desirability. Of course, I’m always a bit confused as to how that works: don’t you have to disclose you just swapped the VIN information from one car to another, and that you didn’t actually build a factory 340/4-speed car? I’d welcome any restoration experts’ opinion as to how useful the VIN is.
The floors are gone and there’s next to nothing left of the interior, but that’s not surprising for something that has been a parts car for the last few decades. If it were in a junkyard, it’d look much the same. The seller says you are welcome to buy the whole car and simply take what you want if the entire carcass isn’t going to fit in your driveway (or because your neighbors may have a slight issue with a stripped carcass of a Barracuda littering the curb). I’d grab whatever VIN pieces I needed, the old-school Jersey license plate, title, and the passenger rear fender to use as a piece of garage art.
Heck. The horns are still there. He didn’t need everything it appears.
Story got more holes than the car. Floors, door sills, even the roof, rusted. That takes driving in the salt and more than 3 weeks. Even if it did have 1000 miles, what’s left, the steering? The stories and comments are worth the membership here alone.
Agreed. Why would you buy back a practically brand new car to set aside for parts? Why wouldn’t you just replace it with a new one and be done with it? This doesn’t make much sense. I suspect the date of the wreck was long after 1970.
Have to agree that it makes little sense unless the buyer didn’t have insurance on the car but what lender would write a check without insurance on the car? Only thing that makes sense would be if the buyer paid cash for the car but how many buyers in that era would have had cash to buy it? Even then typically you have 3 days to transfer your insurance to a new vehicle. Sounds like BS to me.
Times were different in the late 1960s. Quite a few of the farm boys in my area were able to buy a new car with cash as they saved their money. Another group that was able to pay cash were the guys serving in Vietnam. If they were young, not married, no kids, no house then they were able to save up their money as well. I have no idea if either is the case with this car.
The vin is quite valuable if you have a 225 ci. automatic with no title. That is if you DON’T tell anyone, however illegal.
I would rather have a 225 over a 340. A 225 at least is use-able on a public road, the 340 is only good to act like an immature adolescent..
And?
And then? And then you probably wrap it around a tree, quad yourself out, and live the rest of your life in a care center being spoon fed…the end.
I don’t trust the 1-owner wrecked at 1000 miles story a bit. Howard’s right. There’s no way it would rust in every crevice as this one has. I don’t buy that a bit. There’s really nothing here but a Vin. Transferring that to a different body is illegal…it happens but it’s still illegal. If proven that this happened, the car can be repossessed by the government.
The whole VIN fiasco would never be a problem if the value of this stuff hadn’t gotten so crazy.
There is a Traveling Wilburys song, has a line in it: “In Jersey everything’s legal as long as you don’t get caught.”
Maybe Mark Woman from Graveyard Cars should buy ithe car and make it his second phantom Cuda!
Pretty sure even Mark Worman would call in a priest, and give this pile of metal “Last Rites”, and just move on.
Not at all. If a car has sentimental value and the client has the $$, Worman will do it. I have seen him do just that in the past.
So basically the seller is blatantly making it available for VIN fraud, and eBay is facilitating it? Got it.
Anyone that doesn’t like what’s happening only needs to type the VIN number into comment section of this thread. It’s readily visible in the eBay listing and once done will follow this car forever. Smart buyers always google search a VIN number of a collector car. People would be surprised what sometimes turns up.
Steve R
I agree this is a future felony.
I guess only only big time Shelby impersonators go to jail right??????
this heap needs crushed with vin plates…
Someone should put vin it as totaled in the registry
😺
If owner bought back from insurance , they issued him a salvage title, car is really worthless, you will have to show car is dmv legal, get inspected, then they pass car, give you a title stamped rebuilt title, cars with rebuilt titles are worth much much less.
If totalled when new, there likely wasn’t such a thing as a salvage title. I’m pretty certain that it’s a fairly recent (maybe 20 or so years) way to deal with wrecked vehicles.
This is not at all the case. If you own your car outright, and it gets totaled, you do have the ability to “keep” the car and receive the insurance payout less the assessed salvage value of the car. You are not “buying it back from the insurance company”. There is no salvage title issued, as there has been ZERO sales transaction involving the ownership trading hands. The exception is if you let the insurance company take possession of the car (and sign the title over to them) and then somehow elect to buy it back then it would be a salvage branded title. Often times if the car is over 10 years old it does not even get branded at all after being sold through auction. (and these days with Copart and IAA being involved with all transactions like this, I doubt this is very possible anymore).
Honestly your comment is one of those “If I had a nickel for everytime I heard..” situations. It literally lives on as an old wives tale at this point.
Hey you guys must not have spent much time on East coast ,a car can start to catalyst or rust very easy, salt air sucks, I spent two years in va. Rusted the rockets on truck that was soils B4 I got there . So yes I can see that happening in almost 50 year’s
Looking at the rot around the wheel wells in the front fender and rear quarters proves (to me anyway) that the story is BS. That kind of rust out is from salt collecting in the well lip and takes a few years in New England for that to happen ; I live in CT. and have seen it many times in 50 years . My guess is that the car was about 7-10 years old when wrecked, ended up getting slowly parted out over the years in an old time junkyard (the kind where cars never get crushed) and now a flipper who found it sitting there is trying to make a fortune on it. It even looks like the roof has been bowed by a loaders fork when loading on the guys trailer !
Perhaps I’m misunderstanding a few of the comments & maybe even a bit naive, but the way I read the sellers description, they do not ever imply that someone buy the car to remove the vin tag & put on another vehicle?
Now, I’m not a national meteorologist or a meteorologist @ all, for that matter, but being in the NE part of the country & what doesn’t seem all that far from the salty climate of the Atlantic, doesn’t the decay seem feasible? Considering all the significant pieces that have been removed, leaving the rest to exposure & decay. We all know letting something like a vehicle sit often produces a far worse outcome than using it daily. & taking even semi-care of it. I just don’t think it’s that far from possibility?
I’m curious. If someone were to buy the carcass & actually repair & integrate/fabricate the important pieces, that contain the vin, into another car, would that be considered “legal”. If you were to strip the dash pad, remove the vin, restore the dash, re-apply the vin tag & install the entire dash in another car, would that be considered legal? I don’t mean just drilling the vin tag off the rivets & riveting them to another dash.
I’m also curious about the bell housing sitting in the random pile of parts? It appears to be cracked on both sides. Maybe the one on the right is a casting mark, can’t tell? Wonder if that was a result of the accident or possibly a throw away from the car this car went on to save?
“the value of this car is in the VIN.” Those are the seller’s own words. This car is not, in any way restorable. What do you think he’s saying? And no, doing any of what you described would not be legal.
Grant,
I guess I’m not taking the way he has phrased his comment as meaning removing the vin itself. Yes, the seller states “I do not see the body being fixable, that’s up to you.”. We all have our interpretation of “fixable”.
You in your own words say “not in anyway restorable”? I know that you know, if for no other reason than reading BF, much bigger turd barges have been brought back to life from far worse circumstances.
How does one take a car, pick one from a number of examples, that have been through devastating events & “restored” them legally? Seems to me it happens quite frequently, if the car is of significant enough rarity, value & provenance, anything is possible. Where is the line between honesty & fraud?
I would never even consider committing any of the numerous, scandalous things that are done in the automotive world, so I hope I am not coming across as one who is for “vin swapping”. Just wonder where the line is drawn, whether legally or morally? 👍
Back when my brother worked at a Chevrolet Dealership in 1978, Ohio did not require insurance. One guy picked up a new Camaro only to be t-boned when he pulled out of the lot. A complete loss only to be towed back to the house while he made payments. I was telling a guy about this story 10 years ago and he said that was common back then. You still owed the bank the money. My long winded point is for this, go look at the ebay picture of the title. What is the year wrote in the stamped release of the lean removal? I can not tell if it is 1978 or 1970. Looks like a funny 0 if it is 1970.
It’s an 8. That means it was a 9 year auto loan? I don’t think so.
I think it is a hand-written 2. That appears to be the date that the loan was paid off. It would make sense because the title is dated 12/31/69. On a three year loan, he would have paid it off in November 1972.
I agree it is an 8 It looks nothing at all like the other “2”.
Good point. It could be a 5, not a 0 or 8. Too bad it was handwritten and not typed.
Steve R
SMDA ,
what ?
“What” seems to be a pretty vague question. If you require a response, a little more info of just what you desire to know seems to be in order. Love, SMDA
One of the car restoration shows used the sections from a car like this that housed the VINs. They transplanted them to an aftermarket body along with many of the drivetrain and interior parts and got it inspected by the state and titled in the original VIN. It gets real fuzzy determining the difference between when you are using parts to “restore” a vehicle vs. transferring a VIN in an attempt to deceive. State laws appear to vary and their interpretation within each state also isn’t consistent. I’d expect the VIN to show up someplace later down the road on a running/driving vehicle. Otherwise this car has virtually no value.
Remember the lawyer from last week⏳🔫
What’s weird is the k-member in the picture is for a slant six which is pretty rare. Not sure of the numbers but there weren’t very many 6 cylinder E-body Mopar built.
It’s an interesting question, How much of the original car must be retaining when rebuilding or restoring? I’ve see sites on the internet where you can buy a complete body in white for first generation Camaro’s and Mustangs.
The real crime here is asking money for this pile of scrap metal.
I disagree about it not returning to the road. I’ve seen Mark Worman’s crew straighten out bodies way more mangled than this one. It would not be cheap or even practical but it is doable if you wanted to throw enough Benjamins at it.
How many of you guys have cars in your collection with swapped VINs? That’s right,you’re going to say none,but if you have no idea of history of car,you have no idea of history of the VIN😁
funny
Just another guy/gal from the northeast that stores cars like s/he lives in the desert.
Either s/he stripped this car when it was almost new or waited a few years to save up money to swap parts. Clearly it has been sitting outside sans glass since at least the 1st Bush administration.
My question is: If its completely stripped, why keep it at all? Unless you knew someday you were going to sell it, in which case, wouldn’t at least throw a new tarp over it every few years?
Scrap when wrecked then parted out.
Junk
The seventh digit of the VIN is not an ‘8’. It is a ‘B’ if you are trying to do any VIN searches.
If you can take the firewall of a ’32 Ford and build a hotrod around it and license it as a ’32 Ford what’s the difference. Just curious what the opinions are about this.
Help me out here: Why is the VIN so important anyway, unless it’s to identify a valuable collector car. And, if that’s the only reason it’s valuable, then putting it on another vehicle is, if not illegal, certainly dishonest. In the same vein, at what point in the rebuilding / restoring process is a car a completely different vehicle than originally titled? ie: How many parts need to be the same as when manufactured in order to justify using the original VIN.
Not sure about the payoff date but based on an internet search Peoples bank of New Jersey was only in Washington Township from 01-02-1970 until 12-31-1973. so the payoff date had to be in that window.
1914-10-21 Institution established: Original name:The Clayton National Bank
1970-01-02 Merged into and subsequently operated as part of Peoples Bank of South Jersey (9403) in WASHINGTON TOWNSHIP, NJ
1974-01-01 Moved bank headquarters from WASHINGTON TOWNSHIP, NJ to CLAYTON, NJ
1979-09-01 Institution established: Original name:Peoples Bank of South Jersey (22950)
Huh ? Banks trade and sell off conditional sales contracts that are not paid,
to any other financial institution. Especially if they are closing
@ Adam J….In my state,Wv, when customers crash their cars,I tow them or whoever tows them to my lot. Insurance adjuster comes says it’s totaled,owner is given the option to keep it,commonly called buying it back. So I will check the vehicle out,if I am confident I can put it back on the road and be 100 percent safe,I set down talk to customer,if they decide to rebuild it,I repair the car,fill out paperwork,along with current title for WV inspection saying that I performed worked and vehicle is completely safe. Once paperwork is received by inspection dept,they schedule a day at the local DMV in which I have to tow the car to,there a statewide re-construction inspector will inspect it the car,sign off on paperwork,I then submit paperwork to dmv in Charleston,the capitol of Wv, they return to me a salvage title in the customers name ,I then put a current Wv inspection sticker on it,then car is good to go.Customer has completely legal and safe car with the word salvage typed on title 😁
The front cross member is rusted through…did it sit in a pond?
I don’t get the 340 vs 225 comments. At 55 years old, I’m not wraping it around a tree like I would in my 20’s.. Yes a slant 6 is a great engine
but would put me to sleep with bordem, causing me to doze off and then hit a tree.
This thing actually sold for $1,750.00. Boggles the mind.