What to do...

[Espacetic]

I had a car I was restoring stolen from outside my unit in the mid 90's, vanished without trace so I thought it had been either weighed in or the banger boys had got it.

Tonight it's turned up on ebay. Looks like it's had a few owners since and I dont doubt that the current owner came about the car in good faith. It looks like either he or a previous owner have spent a fair bit getting it back on the road. So, do I go to the police and try to claim it back and the poor guy loses a packet? Or do I just continue to write it off as a loss and forget about it?

[Station]

Surely it's worth investigating. I'd personally go and view the car if I was you if it's local. If you don't miss it and you got the pay out, there's no point in making the bloke 'lose it', but I think I'd want to report it to the police.

[Volksy]

I would be worth dropping a PM to Mr Bickle of this parish, He has just had the same thing happen with a Renault 5 Gordini, and a Caravelle I think recently.. Not sure of the outcome in either case though.

[Espacetic]

Not local to me now, but not a million miles from where it was taken. It wasn't insured as it was my own personal toy which was off the road. I asked him a question about it's registration which confirmed it is my old one.

[trigger]

Do you still have a log book for it or crime reference number so you can prove it was stolen?.

[Minimad5]

Contact the police

I assume you had the car registered in your name ?

Hopefully DVLA can confirm, you were infact the registered owner.

 

 

How do you steal a car and re-register it without the previous owner ?

(Or am i just sh*t)

[Espacetic]

This is the strange part, it was Jersey registered when I had it and the papers were not with the car.

Bloke seems to be being decent at the moment though. I've asked him how much he's done to it and spent on it. If it's loads, I'll just leave it be. I'd be gutted to lose it if I was in his shoes.

[GJR 11L]

I had this happen with a MK2 Cortina that I owned in 1992. I saw it, about a year after it was taken from outside my then residence, being driven in traffic, two cars in front of me on my way home.

I was in a Dolomite so keeping up with a 1300cc 'tina with a shagged engine wasn't hard, so I followed at a discrete distance and observed where the car went.

 

I still had a log book for that so, late that night, armed with the keys to the car, a mate and I went and jolly well stole it back!

It had had its correct ('68 'G') plate swapped for a '67 'E') so proving that it wasn't the right car for the number was easy as a '67 would have been pre-crossflow and have other little differences from my '68, crossflow-engined car. However, I simply took it home (by this time I had a garage to put it in) attached my spare pair of reg plates (it had come with reflective ones which I kept when fitting black ones), tidied it up a bit and had another two years of occasional use from it before selling it legitimately.

 

 

The day after matey and self took the car back, we went around, with another pal of ours, to the house from whose drive we'd liberated the car to give the guy back the personal effects that we'd found in the car, the look on the bloke's face when three baldy-headed, 6'3", 17 stone blokes landed on his doorstep carrying his travel rug and box of Kleenex was a picture as we explained what we'd done and why.

Turned out he'd bought it in good faith from the thieving pikey scum who stole it, so I bunged him a few quid for his trouble and thanked him for taking care of it for me.

Disclaimer: There is, in all likelihood, some reason in law why we shouldn't have done what we did, but hey, what would you do, given an opportunity on a plate?