As I understand it, in Britain you can restore a car and retain its
official title and license plate history (along with associated
emissions and safety equipment requirements), on a points basis. What
that requires is that you keep a sufficient number of parts from the
original vehicle through the restoration. You can do a chassis swap to a
purpose-built replacement chassis and body shell, if you keep the
original driveline and other running gear and suspension stuff. On the
other hand, if you keep the original chassis then you can do engine
updates and it is also still considered a vintage vehicle.
So in some ways, the history of this Cobra may be legitimate in that
sense. The chassis and body of the car were replaced not with another
Cobra's, but with a purpose built replacement that did not previously
have any other legal title. This is different from the typical Alger
restoration, which involves stripping an Alpine of its original VIN.
This is illegal and it is unlikely to ever cause the current conversions
to be regarded as "true" Tigers. In the best case, someone will start
creating Tiger replicas; if an Alger was found that had all its Tiger
bits from one (documentable) donor Tiger, then you could transfer all
those parts to the new chassis along with the VIN plate, and that would
at least remove the Alger stigma from that car - it might still have to
be registered using a VIN that noted the chassis manufacturer though.
On the other hand, this Cobra is like the story of the antique
horse-drawn carriage where through several generations of use and
ownership, every single component wore out and was replaced as it
failed, and over time there was not a single original part left on the
thing... But it was still an "antique".
I'm guessing that while the "salvaged" and "various" parts were sold to
the guy who did the restoration along with the MSO documents, not many
of those parts actually are currently on the car. It might be like that
Bugatti that was wrecked at some point and then somehow the wreckage got
divided, and two groups individually used those parts to create two new
cars, each of which claims to be the genuine original article.
Theo
-----Original Message-----
From: tigers-bounces+theo.smit=dynastream.com@autox.team.net
[mailto:tigers-bounces+theo.smit=dynastream.com@autox.team.net] On
Behalf Of Rense, Mark (GE Indust, ConsInd)
Sent: June 27, 2008 12:24 PM
To: tigers@autox.team.net
Subject: [Tigers] How Far Can A Restoration Go?
<snip>
Is this right? If our Tiger's values suddenly climb up into more lofty
territory, will an Alpine-bodied Tiger suddenly become legitimate?
This should be an interesting discussion....
http://www.russoandsteele.com/collector_car/1966_shelby_cobra_427_csx301
2__roadster/39-1018.html
Bugz
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