Dual-Identity Cars |
| Legal Files |
| Written by Martin Emmison |
| Monday, 31 May 2010 16:00 |
Continuous History Car vs. Original Component Car? You decide  In a perfect world, every historic car would boast a spotless provenance and a documented list of distinguished owners, none of whom ever "abused" the car by changing a major component, let alone by crashing it. The real world is different. Witness competition cars, which in their heyday were used very hard and crashed frequently. The urgency then was to get it to its next race. It got whatever it needed-a new frame, another engine, a new body. Just fix it! As a lawyer I have been involved in numerous disputes involving what I call "dual-identity" cars: two machines with some legitimate claim to the same identity. Because the term "chassis number" is ambiguous (meaning either the VIN or the number that is physically stamped on the frame), in this article I propose to use the term "identity" for that letter/number set which identifies a single vehicle. |