Unique Performance’s Alleged Title Washing Is Fishy!
November 9th, 2007 by CobraMatt
This story came out a few days ago about Unique Performance being raided by local police but I have been under the weather so I did not get to write about.
Well it all went down on Tuesday of this week when police raided Unique Performance in Farmers Branch, Texas and confiscated more than 61 vehicles as part of their criminal investigation into what police are alleging as Title-Washing.
According to police Unique Performance has been altering vehicle identification numbers (VIN’s) on the Shelby continuation vehicles they have been building. How it goes is Unique would buy 1960’s Mustangs that were pretty much dead to the world with “salvage titles” meaning the car is a total loss and not road worthy. Unique was also buying 1960’s Mustangs in good condition with titles that were perfect. The police are alleging in order to hide the salvage status Unique swapped VIN’s from similar model cars that didn’t have salvage titles to the cars with good titles thus keeping the car in good standing and selling them as Shelby continuation vehicles.
What the police are alleging just does not make sense to me, why would Unique start with a “salvage” titled vehicle frame instead of one that was in good standing condition which they also were buying. Also why would they swap a VIN from a “non-salvaged” titled vehicle to one that was salvaged thus leaving the car in good condition with no title. Makes no sense to me, maybe I am missing something or my thinking is off.
No charges have been filed according to police but they do expect some to be filed once they sift through all the evidence. Something tells me this will drag on for months and production of Shelby contiuation vehicles will further get behind making customers even wait longer for their cars.
Source: dallasmorningnews.com
MikeC... Says
I see what they are doing but who cares on cars this old?? They would naturally want a clean title for a continuation car. this might be a big deal on newer cars but when you are using pieces and so forth of several 40 year old Mustangs to get one good one who cares which title you use.
Nov 9th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
Jason Says
As old as these cars are, chances are very good that there are pleny of these cars sitting in farm fields, rotted to dust. However, the title still exists. UP could walk up to the owner, offer to pay scrap metal price and voila, they have a clear title for a beat down junked car.
Just because a car is garbage it doesn’t mean that the state automatically deemed it to be salvage.
Nov 9th, 2007 at 8:15 pm