Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 19:17:22 EDT
Reply-To: DAVIDTHEKM@AOL.COM
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: David Hunt <DAVIDTHEKM@AOL.COM>
Subject: A Cautionary Tale on Titles
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Dear Volks,
Since this is Friday or will be by the time most of you get this, I thought
I'd share a note I'm sending to Bob Perring. This is a bit of a
confessional. I'm sharing it so no one else makes the same mistake. I'll
leave the city and seller's name out. Bob knows who I'm talking about.
Some of you may recall that Bob had seen an '82 aircooled Vanagon
AdventureWagen at a garage in a very small town in central Texas. The story
was that it had belonged to a rental company in Florida that rented to German
and Swiss tourists who would drive it to California and then fly home.
Another couple would then fly into California and drive it back to Florida.
In approximately 1991 it developed engine trouble in central Texas. The
rental company decided to leave it there. It went to a towing company. It
was then bought by the guy who sold it to me, according to his story. He
said it drove well enough but ran rough when he got it. He said he worked on
it off and on, mostly off, for a year and gave up. He's retired now, but he
still keeps an office at his garage. His place looks like he could have
fixed it if it had been a F**d or Ch**y or a tractor. Anyway he let a friend
of his have it whose qualifications were that he had owned a Bug 20 years
before. After he worked on it, it no longer ran at all. The "owner" then
towed it back to his shop and parked it in front. It has sat there since
about 1993.
--------------------------------------
Dear Bob,
Here's a note on my adventures so far. This will probably be funny in a year
or so.
I called Mr. B**** a few times and finally made arrangements to go down to
see the camper. We took a tow dolly. That was my first mistake. Bad
negotiating posture. I meant to take a padlock so we could leave the tow
dolly chained to a light pole around the corner where he wouldn't see it, but
I forgot. Anyway he had said on the phone that the camper was $500. When I
got there, he wanted $600. He claimed he had talked to so many people he
couldn't remember who he had told what. That should have been my first
warning that the guy could not be trusted. Since the AdventureWagen appeared
to be in such really good shape, I finally agreed to $600 if he would show me
it rolled, and that the brakes were not frozen, tow it out of the mud hole
where it was sitting and if he and his goober friends would load it on the
tow dolly for me.
We did the deal on a Friday night. Thank goodness I did get a receipt for
the cash I gave him. He said the title was in his lockbox, and he would go
to the bank on Monday to get it and mail it to me. That was July 16th. I
still don't have the title, exactly 2 months later. I started calling after
a week or two. He said he had everything and would mail it. Next he said he
had lost the white transfer of title paper the State of Texas now requires.
I signed another one and sent it to him. After more calls he again claimed
he had all the papers and that he had the title "right in front of him". As
of today, I still have nothing.
The week after I towed it home, I was able to buy a used engine on E**y. I
thought it was fate. That engine has been sitting on its shipping pallet
behind my house for a month.
I finally went to my attorney Tuesday. He was to send B**** a letter
demanding the title in 5 days or telling him to refund my $600, plus about
$800 I had spent on the trip to get it, the tow dolly rental, the used engine
and new fuel lines, plus legal fees, and that he could come after the van
after that was paid. It hasn't been soon enough to hear anything back from
him yet.
I have also contacted Austin and Tallahassee. Austin says they have no
record it ever was registered in Texas and had a Texas title. Tallahassee
says they can't find it, but that old inactive records are no longer on their
computer. I suspect that the rental company sold it or gave it to the towing
company for towing charges and that they never got the title.
I found the name of the rental company in a cabinet inside the camper.
Amazingly enough they're at the same address in Miami today. When I called
this week I got the owner who was very nice but was busy boarding up his
house for the hurricane. He said he'd check his records when the office
reopened. I've sent him a letter asking him to apply for a duplicate title.
Both Florida and Texas have told me that only the registered owner can apply
for a duplicate. Of course some of my friends have told me they know a guy
who knows a guy who can get a title for anything. I don't want to go that
way.
My best of all possible worlds is that Mr. B**** will refund the $600 + the
$800 and that I can buy it from the guy in Florida for $1. This is highly
unlikely. If you've been to I***, you know that the entire town and county
police force, such as it is, probably eats every day at the cafe Mr. B****
also owns. It appears to be the only eating place in town. He also had
posters on the wall of the garage from when he ran for constable recently.
He probably won. That's another reason I haven't gone back in person, as
well as the distance. That would be like accusing Sheriff Lobo of theft.
He'd probably arrest me for something.
My attorney says selling something that's not yours is nothing but fraud. I
guess I don't know the distinction between selling a vehicle as a pile of
parts, which doesn't require a title, versus as a vehicle with a title so it
can be registered. The attorney says when you sell it as a vehicle to be
restored you are promising you can produce a clean title. For now I'm
assuming that the towing company just bought it for scrap so never got the
title in the first place, and that there's nothing criminal going on. I feel
like calling B**** and asking him if he's a crook or just senile. It will be
interesting to see how this turns out. I'm not going to spend anything
replacing fuel lines or installing the engine until I get a clear title.
Meanwhile the weather's finally broken. This week it's gone from nearly 100
degrees to the upper 80's. I should be driving the camper to the Josh
Roger's campout this weekend. Instead I have a 5,000 pound yard ornament.
Bob, thanks again for telling the list about this and giving us a chance to
look at it. I trust this will have a happy ending, but that may be a long
way off.
------------------------------------------------
The moral of the story - don't ever buy a vehicle without seeing the title
with your own eyes. You must be sure the person who's selling it is actually
the owner. You know what they say about assumptions. It's TRUE. I'm proof.
I guess the other moral is if you begin to get bad vibes about a seller, run
- don't walk - away, no matter how attractive the vehicle appears to be. I
still love the A'wagen. Sometimes I just go out and sit in it and make
engine sounds out loud. Vroom, Vroom!! However, I don't know if it's going
to be worth the aggravation by the time this is over.
David Hunt '68 Crewcab '74 Thing '82 Vanagon yard ornament
