Quote Originally Posted by HK1837 View Post
They could, but again it is always buyer beware in all these cases and given it is a Pagewood set of tags unless you had the right Pagewood firewall number (yes they are predicatable) it'd always be easily picked as a rebody - again buyer needs to do their homework. I'm not saying being fraudulent is OK - it isn't. It is however far better to do your research properly and avoid the issue altogether - people get too caught up with $ signs in their eyes. However in the end a really nice street car with say a BBC, custom paint and interior it wouldn't matter to a buyer if it was a Monaro or a GTS, so to them the tags and their relationship to the body are irrelevant or at least far less relevant than to many others. I still don't think a person should be drawn and quartered for obtaining tags to put on a good shell they've found, and building up a car - good on them. As long as none of it is stolen property and they don't set out to commit fraud what does it matter? If someone in the future is fraudulent with the car it isn't the guy who built the car's fault. I know all this stuff is all tied up in legal cr@p today and solely bought about by (once again) $$$$ and paranoia, but in the past like the 80's and 90's people did this stuff all the time, if a car had a rusty body you turfed it and bought a replacement shell, there was a reasonable market for rust free shells especially utes, tonners and coupes. I had a near rust free 308 4spd HQ coupe in the 90's - I stripped it and sold off any saleable bits and the rolling shell went to QLD to be used to rebody a GTS350 that had been in a big rear end accident - this was normal and acceptable practice and it didn't matter a damn. The 308 GTS's tags would still be out there somewhere as it was wearing them when it left, I wouldn't be surprised if they ended up being re-used again. I think it was Orchid with black trim but don't remember for certain.
Thanks HK1837 for your quote it saved me a lot of typing. A debate on the id of a vehicle has been going on for a long time. So many if buts and maybes, eg. removing tags for a full restoration or a full restoration using another shell. Having a chassis, and body but renewing everything else, replacing and engine with number that are close to the original and the list would go on. Its does seem morally wrong to over state the vehicle but it has always been buyer beware. As I see it the main reason that all this is an issue is the price that people will pay for what has become a rare item and that the manufacture ( Holden )did not keep satisfactory records. Even if they had done a little better keeping the purchase info that they would have had for warranty claims or an engine number that matched the rest of the id plates.