Trouble was waiting down the line

[tirebird]

When I bought the Tirebird I broke the first law of commerce,..take your time and inspect everything. This past weekend, after renewing my insurance, I decided to get an appraisal. I always set an arbitrary number for my "agreed upon value". I wanted to put some real verifiable data behind the number. So, while the appraiser was crawling all over my car he asked, "why is your vin different than your title?" What? Sure enough, in the sixth position on the car's title, where there is a number indicating the model year, one in my case, there was the letter "A". I was dumbfounded. I never noticed. But, I wasn't alone, the Vin number on the title was incorrect, it turned out, back to when BFG sold the car to Tom Senter, in 1972. The three subsequent owners before me never caught the mistake.

This morning I went to the DMV, armed with my PHS info. along with my 1971 shop manual. The DMV vehicle inspector didn't need any of it. She looked at the Vin on the dash, filled out a form, and sent me to a DMV clerk who quickly changed the title to the correct Vin. I don't want to think of what could have happened years from now if I tried to sell the car.

[Bill Pritchard]

Same thing happened to me on our former 69 Impala convertible. Three owners before us, someone made a typo somehow changing the letter 'S' in the VIN into the numbers '75'. No one else caught or corrected it until me, and by the time I even noticed it, we had owned the car about 10 years!

[Ngtflyr]

I had it happen to me too on a 69 Chevelle SS Convertible. Went to get an AZ title, DMV inspecter noted the Vin was different and I about had a heart attack. She looked into it and I expected the worst based on previous experiences there. She came back out and said no problem, luckily the number in question designated it a convertible and she said, I can tell it's a convertible and she created a new title with the correct VIN. First time I ever left that place with a smile.