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Here is what I see as another possible problem.There are only 3 vins on 1st gen Camaros.One is on the firewall,over the heater box,one is the tag on the dash{68/69}and the oter is on the subframe.What if somebody bought a dynacorn body,drilled ot the welds that hold the upper cowl area to the original car including the upper dash area,and reused the old subframe and attached it all to the dynacorn body?Technically all the numbers would match.You could go further and say that somebody can restamp the numbers into the cowl and front subframe using stamps and gang holders and you wouldnt b able to tell that the car wasnt original.
I am restoring a car that I cut up into a race car 20 years ago and would like to put back on the street now.I am replacing the entire floorpan from toeboards to tail light panel including the rear rails with new metal,along with inner and outer wheelhouses,full 1/4's and a tail panel.I am also putting 2 donor doors with new skins and 2 NOS fender on it and a new upper and lower front panel,new bumpers and braces.All that will be original will be the rockers,the roof and most of the roof inner structure,and the entire firewall.I dont have any problems calling my car legit,and plan on restoring it to chalk mark specs.I dont know of many cars that are restored that have 50% of their structural or external sheet metal left anyhow.If they have more the 50% of their metal theft,then chances are they are touted as a nearly unmolested original.Most of these old cars started sprouting rust holes about 2 years after they were madel,and the ones that didnt only stayed clean because they were hacked into race cars.
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The first paragragh = illegal because the person would be restamping a confidential VIN and moving the VIN tag to a different body.
The second paragraph = legal and the correct (albeit expensive) way to restore a car. Good luck - Post some photos of your progress!
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I agree with both conclusions above, but that goes right back to the original question in the first post in this thread -- where is the dividing line between rebodied and not rebodied? If the rivets are not drilled out of any of the vin or cowl tags, and the upper firewall/dash top and the driver's side A-pillar (for a car with a door-jamb vin tag) are reused from the original car, but every single other piece of the entire body is replaced, is that a rebody or not??
'Legal' versus 'illegal' does not answer that question.
If it is a rebody, then how many more parts from the original car (even if they don't have VIN stamps) would you have to retain or reuse for it not to be a rebody?
In the example above, the ENTIRE firewall and roof (back to the sails) is being reused. So that smells like NOT a rebody, becuase everyone is already very used to having to replace floors, floor braces, wheelhouses and quarters. But what if it was a vinyl top car and the roof had to be replaced too? Have we crossed the rebody line?
Or what if the kick panels were rusted out, and the restorer decided it is better to replace the entire A-pillar structure with one solid factory welded piece from a rust free car rather than to patch up the original swiss cheese?
On the flip side, you could have a very nice, rust free car that got hit in the driver's side hinge pillar area, such that the firewall, dash and hinge/A-pillar on that side need to be replaced. That will obviously entail removing the tags, and putting them back on after the repairs are done. Is that a rebody? It seems like it shouldn't be, because the vast majority of the original body is intact and unchanged.
So if there is ever going to be an "objective" standard, it must eventually boil down to a "percentage of original structure" test (and outer sheet metal skin really ought to be irrelevant). The problems with that are (1) how do you pick an arbitrary percentage and who decides, and (2) if the hobby can't agree on a percentage and we're left with the "smell" test (that we have all been applying ourselves for years), each person's nose has a different sensitivity.
Conclusion - We're never going to have a clear answer on this subject that everyone can agree on; and the crooked folks that are doing outright, obvious rebodies and lieing about it are going to keep on doing it unless they know they will get outed when they do. So let's all keep ratting them out whenever they try it, and eventually that might slow them down some!
Jeff