Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2009 11:14:33 -0500
Reply-To: Ken Wilford <kenwilfy@COMCAST.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Ken Wilford <kenwilfy@COMCAST.NET>
Subject: Re: stolen VW van found - our five minutes of recognition?
In-Reply-To: <6e95da690911090633n38dfe0b4xa15eda01be1a55a5@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Actually this story shows you how misleading the media can be and how
they can spin stories to seem to say something that they don't really
say. They word and phrase the story so that the overall impression you
get is that here is a VW Bus that was stolen 35 years ago and was
recently found in a container in pristine condition. However if you
read the story more carefully you find out that bus has probably been
owned and driven by someone this entire time because actually how it
wound up in the container is that a company in Nevada (I believe) just
recently did a full restoration on it and then sold it to a customer in
the Netherlands. So the bus has only been in the container for a short
time, it was being inspected to be shipped overseas and the reason it is
in pristine shape is that the guys at the bus restoration shop had just
went over it in order to sell it for an inflated price to a person in
the Netherlands. So you see how things can get twisted up so easily.
Now the story isn't so hot. The guys at the restoration shop are out a
bunch of money because they probably bought the van from someone else
with a bill of sale. The fact that the van was stolen probably didn't
show up when the had the title transferred to them because the DMV of
California and Nevada weren't connected back in the day. So the only
reason this came to light was that the van had been stolen in California
and that is where they were doing the final inspection before shipping
it out. So the shop owners are out a bunch of money just because the
DMV of Nevada dropped the ball and didn't know this was a stolen vehicle
from the get go. Who knows who the original thief was but he probably
sold it to some unsuspecting person in Utah or Nevada back in the day so
he is long gone. I hate that this bus was stolen but really at this
point everyone who is involved is an innocent victim and the insurance
company gets a windfall because they paid out $1200 back in 1974 and
they now can auction this bus off for probably 20 times that and the
Nevada shop gets nothing! Not only that but you can't do a carfax on
something this old and there really isn't a comprehensive way to check
old titles so it will probably happen again in the future. Next time
ship it out of the port of New York! That is the lesson to be gleaned
from this deal. :-)
Ken Wilford
John 3:16
www.vanagain.com
Joy Hecht wrote:
> Did anyone else hear the bit on Morning Edition about a vanagon stolen
> decades ago that just showed up in a shipping container routed for Germany?
> Apparently it had been there all along, and is in pristine condition.
> Belongs to Allstate, which had paid off the insurance claim ages ago.
>
> Yippee, the vanagon made it to NPR with something other than Car Talk
> ridicule!
>
>
>
> Joy
>
>
| 
