Jim, et al.,
I had thoughts along those lines, but after discussing at bit and looking at
the problem from another point of view, I can see the reason this can be a
problem. First of all, you can't make money restoring your own car, BUT you
CAN make money restoring a car for someone else. I've heard stories of some
pretty big bucks put into restorations. I can testify as to a fairly major
drain on my bank account for the restoration of my car (yes it is a Tiger and
is authenticated) and I can believe people puting in twice or three times as
much money. Suppose we're talking $50k or so for a first class restoration.
Now, nobody in their right mind would pay this much for someone elses Tiger,
but I'll bet there are more than a handfull of us who, if we really added up
all the receipts, could approach or even pass this figure. Now, if I'm going
to pay this kind of money, there can be several reasons why someone might take
even a salvageable Tiger and swap ID's with a really nice, rust free, etc.,
Alpine. The guy doing the resto might even do this without the owners
knowledge. I'm sure you can imagine various scenarios of this sort. Well,
for whatever reason, now you find yourself with $50k invested and now some guy
you never heard of is saying he can identify your car as a fraud. WHOOOPS!!!
Suddenly the car you invested $50k in, and could be sold for half that, is now
only worth 1/4 that. I'm just guessing that there are at least of few owners
out there in just this sort of pickle. How they got there may vary, but the
end result is the same. It's at this point that the issue of "intent to
defraud" raises its ugly head. Do I divulge the transgression to a
prospective buyer?? I'm just dumb lucky I'm not in this situation myself.
For most of the time I owned my Tiger (since'70) I couldn't have cared less
about the issue of authenticity. Wish I had back a lot of those valuable and
unique pieces I threw away. Probably still wouldn't want them on my car, but
at least I could sell them to someone for whom originality is important.
I don't think this clears up this issue completely by any means, but maybe you
can see why, in spite of the fact that it seems uneconomical to build an Alger
to sell for a profit, that a lot of them get built anyway.
Just a few thoughts from my humble perspective,
Bob
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