[MotownMadman]

Jeff, Interesting point. I am troubled by the fact that a few years ago the judges at Bloomingtons Corvette show decided that it was acceptable to restamp a vin into an engine block as long as casting and date codes were correct and the correct stamps used in which a company in Texas leases them out for that reason. This is a subject in which there are opinions on both sides and there probebly will never be a unanimous opinion. Interesting in another post here about legal vs illegal, street racing is illegal, yet I have a document here from Ford Motor Company from 1969 which was a marketing stragegy for muscle cars, it goes into detail on how to market and promote street racing as Ford found by survey it encompassed 80% of their high performance market. How can a transmission which carries a VIN be replaced and be acceptable, yet replacing an engine that carries the same VIN not be acceptable? In my mind the only true original cars are those which have never had anything replaced with the exception of normal maintenance items such as belts, hoses, etc. When a car is restored, repainted with new weatherstips, etc, etc, is the car still original or is it an restored original? At what point does a car go from being original to being correct? I would think that a numbers matching car is just that, a car that has the original drivetrain componants wearing the original, not restamped VIN's. On the Yenko cars, when they are repainted and the stripes are replaced with aftermarket, is the car still original? In this day and age with the rarity and value of these cars, and considering all the fakes being built, the top people in this hobby should get together and come up with a survey/questioneer that asks these questions and more that the results can be used to define some guidelines and boundries for everyone to follow that will define original, correct, acceptable, and non-acceptable. The art world has similar guidelines that were defined due to the interest in the hobby and the growing rarity and value. The collector car world needs something similar to go by which answers these questions and more, something that will bring and end to the speculation and arguments once and for all, a self policeing set of rules, guidelines, or laws so to speak which govern the hobby. Just one confused collecters opinion. Motown [img]/ubbthreads/images/icons/confused.gif[/img]