Crooks Prey on the Unwitting With Cloned Cars

There is a dark side of muscle car collecting.

“As the stakes went up, the crooks came out,” explained Corvette aficionado Brian Lee, of Mt. Pleasant, Tex.

The biggest problem: unscrupulous sellers and restorers who clone muscle cars from standard models and pass them off as original. For example, said Craig Jackson of Barrett-Jackson Auction Co., it’s all too easy to be stung when dealing with 1963-67 Chevrolet Corvettes.

Last year, the most powerful versions of the 1967 Sting Rays sold for as much as $100,000. But experts say there are now more of these Corvettes--known as “tri-powers” because of their three-carburetor induction systems--on the road than were produced by the factory, thanks to the availability of restoration parts and the potential for big bucks. In fact, sharp scroungers are turning salvage-yard iron into gold, asking as much as $4,000 for correctly dated and numbered carburetor setups alone .

By contrast, a dozen years ago, $4,000 would buy a first-rate, original-condition 1967 Corvette convertible, powered by a 427-cubic-inch, 435-horsepower engine. And that was for a car with “documentation”--the bill of sale, manufacturer’s window sticker, factory order sheet, dealership invoice and title and service records coveted by hard-core auto collectors.

“It’s almost impossible to verify one of those cars,” says Tom Sloe of the Corvettes. “They make every piece of documentation now. All they’re doing is changing the number on the engine to correspond to the (vehicle identification number) on the car.

“As collectors we need to band together and turn over to the authorities anybody who is committing fraud,” said Sloe, a Cleveland-area auto repair shop owner who has 25 muscle cars. “That’s the biggest thing that will hurt these cars.”

The best way to protect yourself is to become an expert--read, join car clubs and attend car shows, swap meets and nostalgia races--or hire an expert.

“It’s very easy to wish a car is what it is claimed. It’s also a very good way to lose a lot of money,” said Robert DeMars, whose Oakland company appraises collectible autos and charges a minimum of $470 to appraise a muscle car.