|
One day late last year, a guy which George
Hussey, our president, vaguely knew through mutual 1965 Buick
Riviera ownership called our business to schedule a service
appointment for his Porsche. He thought it coincidental that
both he and George owned Buicks and Porsches and went on to
rave about his, not seen as of yet, beauty. That Saturday
his beauty arrived, flat bedded to our shop too perfect he
said, to expose to Atlanta traffic! And what a beauty it was!
Perfect original paint, flawless original interior, immaculate
eat-off-the-engine perfection! A scrape on the bumper and
slight imperfection on the quarter panel were it's only flaws
(he said he should not have let his sister drive such a high
powered car that day!) George envied him for having such a
pristine example and wished to have such a low mile Turbo
himself, especially the best year range of '87-'89!
We gently eased the car off the carrier and
the customer lovingly covered it with his flannel cover, remarking
that the car had never seen the rain! George himself checked
the car in on a service ticket, and while complementing the
guy on his pristine find, asked: "Is your car an '87, "88,
or "89?" "Oh!" the customer said, it's a 1983!" George was
taken aback. He knew the car was an 87-89 but just assumed
this nice customer was a little foggy. So as he proceeded
to write "1983" on the order George casually asked a follow
up question: "How long have you had it?" "Since 1984" was
the response... The alarm went off in George's head!!!
After the customer left, George hurried out
to examine this so called 1983 turbo. Although obviously an
original unrestored, unrepaired, almost flawless 87-89, George
carefully checked all of the numbers. Sure enough the numbers
designated it an 1983 euro model and running a car fax showed
it arriving into this country in 1993. The numbers were all
immaculate and looked untouched, the only discrepancy beyond
the fact that it was a later car and the engine number was
from an '89 was the sticker in the door jamb: "conforms to
all U.S. specifications on date of manufacture" It was then
that George had us call the cops!
One young officer came out , examined the car
and the evidence, verified the registration (which by the
way was not even in our customers name!!) and then announced
that there was nothing that he could do as everything looked
"ok and untampered with" to him. You could imagine our and
George's horror that the police were going to do nothing about
this (obvious to George) stolen car, so George took the next
step. He called the Porsche archives department and traced
the engine id number to the original manufacturers identification
number, ran a carfax on that vehicle and compared their similar
histories through New York, New Jersey, and Florida. Armed
with all of this evidence, we again called the police, this
time insisting that a sergeant come by. Finally we got some
action! After an additional examination, the police agreed
that the car was stolen, and promptly had it towed away to
investigate.
The anticipated customer car came before we
knew it: "You could have at least called me before calling
the cops" "That car is not stolen I bought it back in 1984!"
"This is causing me a lot of trouble and someone is going
to pay!" Six months later we did pay! We legitimately purchased
this now legitimate car through the Insurance company auction
as it's highest bidder. We of course had and advantage though,
as we had thoroughly checked this car, knew it's history ,
kept in touch with the insurance company, them thanking us
as heroes, and knew well that this pristine low mile 1989
Turbo was everything it looked to be!!
|
