So how far is too far??

[RichSchmidt]

I see a lot of post on here about bogus cars and the selling and swapping of vin tags and trim tags.I was wondering where everybody stands on this matter.When is a car a rebody and when is it a tag job?If you were to happen to stumble across a brand new with the plastic still on the seats 1969 ZL1 camaro with less then 1 mile on the clock hidden up in the loft of an old car dealership,and the only thing wrong with it was that a roof rafter torpedoed thru the middle of the car and crushed the roof and the floorpan into shrapnel,what would you do with this car?This is hypothetical of course.If somebody were to restore a bare camaro shell to absolute perfection,and then swap all the salvageable parts from the ZL1 onto this body including the subframe and even as much of the original unibody floorpan and frame structure as you could salvage,would it be a legit restoration of this car?How about if you found a ZL1 that spent it's entire life as a race car and was now sporting a tube chassis and tin can floors and firewall,but the owner sold you the original engine,and driveline parts as well as the tags along with the roof,quarter panels and door frames,and front subframe from the original car,could such a car be restored?at what point would you say the quality of the restoration would be better if the restorer would have just replaced the damaged original body with a clean one rather then repairing"everything" on the original?

A few weeks ago I saw a listing on Ebay for a 69 camaro SS396 convertable with the original numbers matching engine.The car had a missing or mangled front subframe,the floors were rotted out completley,the rockers and rear quarters were missing,and the car was stripped of every soft part.Basically the car needed full floorpans,2 full quarters,rockers,a trunk lid,2 doors,a front subframe and all the front sheetmetal just to be able to look like a restorable car.The rear end and trans were gone,as was all the top hardware I believe.So basically it would be OK for somebody to restore this car even though the only original GM steel on this car would be the doorjams and maybe the tail panel,but it would be wrong to swap on another clean body from a 6 cylinder convertable.

Right now I think you can obtain clean titles from vermont by sending in a pencil sketch of the vin of a car you possess to a "title searcher".If they do a title search and it comes up clean they will mail a clean vermont title to you in any state you reside.How long will it be until the VIN tags and trim tags from the remaining unidentified ZL1's are restamped and titles issued to cars that vanished 20 years ago?
So back to my question.How much restoration is too much before a car is considered not legit?