A Classic Car Cautionary Tale

Here's a true story that illustrates how important it is to verify exactly what you're buying. When it comes to collector cars and antiques it pays to either become an expert on your chosen item or take one along with you during the buying process. Anyone can claim anything about a car (previous owners, special equipment, etc.) and unscrupulous sellers know how hard it is to verify such claims. They'll cheat you if they can, so be careful and do your homework like the person in the following story.

We do expert witness consulting for various attorneys here in the Washington DC area and recently were told about an upcoming case on which we might be asked for assistance. We can't give specifics on this case because it hasn't been fully settled yet, but you'll get the idea as you read along.

One of the attorneys we work with was hired by the seller (of a very rare sports car) because he is being sued for fraud by the new owner. The new owner claims that he spend several thousand dollars having the car's history investigated and it is not, as claimed, one of the extremely rare models that he paid for (he paid nearly $200,000, by the way.) The seller has maintained that the car is exactly as was advertised and steadfastly denied any knowledge to the contrary. The seller is a part-time collector car dealer.

Conversations between the seller's attorney and the buyer have been ongoing for several months and each detail has been discussed with the seller, who has countered each charge in rebuttal. Eventually, however, the buyer sent to the seller's attorney a stack of detailed, notarized paperwork that shows clearly the car's history. Reading the history shows that the car was simply a "stock" version of the sports car and although it's a valuable collector car it's not worth anywhere near the selling price.

When the attorney showed the paperwork to his client he was surprised by the response. After denying all charges up to that point the seller finally admitted that the car was not the rare model he had claimed it was but rather a stock car that he built as a copy of the rare model. Simply put: he defrauded the buyer.

As things turned out, the buyer has decided to keep the car but the seller has to reimburse the difference in value between what the stated value of the rare model was and the actual value of a stock model – about $75,000 plus legal fees.

While it's easy to be judgmental toward the seller (he's obviously a con artist) the point we're making here is that failure to verify what you're buying can cost you a lot of money and time to make things right. In this case the buyer will end up with a fair deal but in most others buyers just get screwed.

Do your homework up front!