russo and steel chop job camaro copo

[Canada George]

O.K.
--- read it
--- thought about it
--- conclusion:

[real-muscle-1]

idiot!

[Stefano]

On a good note. I think that the advise and ideas presented on this site have filtered down to some of the Auctions.

While at Russo and Steele in Monterey California, a Gorgeous Muscle car, which I was going to bid on, came across, the block. It had good owner history, paperwork and matching numbers.

The Auction announced that the car was a "rebody" and the bids were tendered accordingly. I didn't recall seeing that disclosure on any of the marketing material.

[sYc]

Wow..cool to know that maybe our membership can make a postive impact on our hobby.

[Les Quam]

Recently at a sports memorablia auction that took place in Chicago. The one where the Honus Wagner baseball card sold for 1.6 million. The FBI was serving subpoena's during the auction on the auction house. This sports memorablia auction house is the largest in the world. The FBI is reportedly investigating the auction house for artificially inflating the market on sports collector items. One aspect of the investigation according to the Chicago tribune report was the alleged use of phantom bidders by the auction house. The FBI had previously been investigating sports memorablia auction houses and the industry in general for rampant fraud and determined that 75% of the items sold in the industry were fake?

In my humble opinion the classic car auction houses will be next on the list for the feds to investigate. I have never understood how or why the auction houses came to the conclusion it was legal to "use all means necessary" to get the bidding near or to the bidders reserve via the use of phantom bidders. I imagine the owners have asked an attorney or had one review this practice to determine its validity? But I have never been able to figure out how this is not a fraudulent practice nor have any of the other attorneys I have asked?

I also think cars and their owners like the one mentioned on this thread would come under scrutiny given the vast amount of bogus or fake cars that get washed through these auctions. However this area seems to be more problematic given the complexity of making the actual determination of authenticity?

[ddzapper]

I am brand new to this forum - this is my first post. I am currently looking for a 67-70 big block Chevelle and try to read as much as possible concerning these cars. My problem is that I am not an expert in this field - I am lucky enough to be able to finally afford one of these cars after raising a family and getting the kids out of the house. My take on any auction house is that if they are going to accept the huge commissions that come with these misrepresented cars - then they need to be the police of their own auction house. If a car is represented as COPO or ZL1 or whatever, then that car needs to be certified as such. The cost of this should originally be borne by the owner who wants to sell it as such. If this was done with every car that was sold, the cars would probably sell for more than enough money to cover that additional cost because the buyer knows that he is getting a "certified" car. Each seller would be required to do this before it could be sold as such. If he didn't want to do it - fine - let the market decide where the price should be. After several years, there would exist a large database of certified cars that would make the industry a lot safer to a rookie buyer like myself. This isn't an overnight fix, but it is sure better than what exists now. Yes, there would be some glitches, but everything can be solved if enough thought is put into it.

[Charley Lillard]

Welcome to the site. You should post a wanted ad for what you are looking for. There are many here that come upon good cars and good advise.

[ChevyThunder]

Last year at Monterey there was a 1974 Porsche RSR that sold for near 900K with comission. Some of us guys already suspected this car was a rebody and when it came out it started a fuss and eventually an independant authority inspected the car , concluded it was a rebody and the auction house refunded the all monies to the buyer and held the car until the seller wired both the seller and buyers commissions to them . They took the stand that it was the sellers obligation to represent their car properly and if they didn't that was their problem and that the auction house had performed and therfore earned their comission.

Cost the guy 170K to get his rebodied car back. In the Porsche world that 900K car just became worth about the sum of its parts .. about 250K

[m22mike]

Hi David
Welcome, what part of the Buckeye State are you from ??

Mike

[1railman]

There is a solution to this and no one has seized the obvious. All reputable certifiers ( a step above an appraiser) should be bonded. Of course this would not be a simple program and the guide book would be an inch thick. A large insurance company could back such a program and make sure certain steps were followed, no matter the car. Certifiers would have a limited field such as Duesenberg or COPO's. My guess would be there would only be a handful of certifiers in each specialty.