Misdiscribing classic cars.
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crankedup

Original Poster:

25,764 posts

272 months

Tuesday 27th February 2018
quotequote all
Inaccurate information or just down right lies, is alive and well in the classic car market it appears.
Noted a Austin A30 van discribed as a ‘rare countryman’, it’s not it’s a van conversion.
Another Austin A30 described as a 1952 rare AS3 model, it’s not it’s a late 1953 car.

Both vehicles seem reasonable for what they are, not as discribed. Most be plenty of corkers
out there.

P5BNij

15,875 posts

135 months

Tuesday 27th February 2018
quotequote all
crankedup said:
Inaccurate information or just down right lies, is alive and well in the classic car market it appears.
Noted a Austin A30 van discribed as a ‘rare countryman’, it’s not it’s a van conversion.
Another Austin A30 described as a 1952 rare AS3 model, it’s not it’s a late 1953 car.

Both vehicles seem reasonable for what they are, not as discribed. Most be plenty of corkers
out there.
Plenty of '60s and '70s Minis being described as a Cooper or Cooper S despite being tarted up bog standard 850s or 1000s and no mention of Cooper on the V5C. Sadly some buyers still take the vendor's word for it.

crankedup

Original Poster:

25,764 posts

272 months

Tuesday 27th February 2018
quotequote all
P5BNij said:
crankedup said:
Inaccurate information or just down right lies, is alive and well in the classic car market it appears.
Noted a Austin A30 van discribed as a ‘rare countryman’, it’s not it’s a van conversion.
Another Austin A30 described as a 1952 rare AS3 model, it’s not it’s a late 1953 car.

Both vehicles seem reasonable for what they are, not as discribed. Most be plenty of corkers
out there.
Plenty of '60s and '70s Minis being described as a Cooper or Cooper S despite being tarted up bog standard 850s or 1000s and no mention of Cooper on the V5C. Sadly some buyers still take the vendor's word for it.
Jeeeez, and that must be big money differences on those cars! ouch.
I have contacted the A30 club to advise me and they have been extremely helpful making sure I don’t fall into a misdiscribed car. Chassis numbers and what to look for.

P5BNij

15,875 posts

135 months

Tuesday 27th February 2018
quotequote all
It's been happening for years with old Minis, the trouble is in the days of handwritten log books it was easy to add 'Cooper' or 'S' and change engine numbers etc...!


ClaphamGT3

12,223 posts

272 months

Tuesday 27th February 2018
quotequote all
If you look at the court case between Stanley Mann and Mercedes Brewer, the judge could not have been clearer that the onus is on the purchaser to assure themselves as to the provenance of a classic car

imagineifyeswill

1,250 posts

195 months

Tuesday 27th February 2018
quotequote all
Ive read a couple of times that there are more MK1 Lotus Cortinas around now than were ever built originally.

HealeyV8

451 posts

107 months

Tuesday 27th February 2018
quotequote all
Same with mk1 Escort Mexicos

Allan L

799 posts

134 months

Tuesday 27th February 2018
quotequote all
And ERAs - though all properly documented

It is quite strange how often one comes across people who have paid significant sums of money without properly investigating the claims made by the vendor. When the VCC had a Dating Panel and I was on it, we had several cases where we could not assign the Date claimed and the applicant seemed not to understand the concept of evidence (as the old court saying has it "what you say the soldier said isn't evidence!").


Mercky

642 posts

164 months

Tuesday 27th February 2018
quotequote all
crankedup said:
Inaccurate information or just down right lies, is alive and well in the classic car market it appears.
Noted a Austin A30 van discribed as a ‘rare countryman’, it’s not it’s a van conversion.
Another Austin A30 described as a 1952 rare AS3 model, it’s not it’s a late 1953 car.

Both vehicles seem reasonable for what they are, not as discribed. Most be plenty of corkers
out there.
You're misspelling misdescribing, its just not on.

jamesatcandsc

232 posts

185 months

Tuesday 27th February 2018
quotequote all
Allan L said:
And ERAs - though all properly documented
I once wrote in a programme for an event something along the lines of: "All 19 of the 17 ERAs will appear this weekend..."
I was delighted when the organisers just smiled and signed it off.

P5BNij

15,875 posts

135 months

Tuesday 27th February 2018
quotequote all
''Of the 25,000 or so original Mini Cooper and Cooper S models built between 1961 and 1971, it's thought that as many as 27,143 are still on the road....'' wink

Caveat emptor, what.

Riley Blue

23,205 posts

255 months

Tuesday 27th February 2018
quotequote all
jamesatcandsc said:
Allan L said:
And ERAs - though all properly documented
I once wrote in a programme for an event something along the lines of: "All 19 of the 17 ERAs will appear this weekend..."
I was delighted when the organisers just smiled and signed it off.
laugh

a8hex

5,832 posts

252 months

Tuesday 27th February 2018
quotequote all
I remember the confusing situation of being told that there are a certain number of D-Types in a room and yet your eyes can see rather more. Talk about going cross eyed.

TR4man

5,526 posts

203 months

Tuesday 27th February 2018
quotequote all
As a TR enthusiast, it always amazes me how many TR6s are advertised for sale not with petrol injection but twin carbs with no mention in the advert that the car is a less powerful ex-American model.

As previously stated buyer beware.

crankedup

Original Poster:

25,764 posts

272 months

Tuesday 27th February 2018
quotequote all
Not just A30’s then hehe

Same old same old, where easy money can be made the scoundrel will be around the ne t corner.

Muddle238

4,416 posts

142 months

Wednesday 28th February 2018
quotequote all
It's the same story in the Land Rover world, firstly with Defender models labelled as the more desirable SW models when in fact they're just hard tops with windows installed.

The other one appears to be Series 3 Land Rovers having a new front end or in some cases, just a new grille. They then declare them as a Series 2, but have the cheek to say they've "upgraded" the dash to the plastic Series 3 dashboard!!!

P5BNij

15,875 posts

135 months

Wednesday 28th February 2018
quotequote all
I remember reading about Rover P6 3500 manual V8s being sold on ebay which were just converted autos, apparently the genuine manual cars have a different width transmission tunnel.

Eight years ago I went to have a look at a Mk2 Mini that was described as a genuine '69 Cooper, it was only local so I thought it was worth a shuftie. Looking round it inside and out I noticed a few things which didn't sit right - the log book said 998cc Cooper and the engine and ancillaries were spot on, but the shell and chassis number was from a Mk2 850 with a rod change gearbox, and the floor pressing is slightly different on non Cooper Minis and this one had also been bodged with later Mk4 floor pressings. It was a nice enough car though with a lot of potential but not what I was really looking for (I found another genuine Cooper a few weeks later and bought it). I pointed out the anomalies to the seller who was more of a Triumph man and admitted he didn't know much about Minis, he was very gracious about it and advertised as a Cooper as that's what the log book said it was. He happily changed the advert to reflect this and still managed to get £4k for it. Goes to show there are some honest folk out there who don't always know what they're selling, but there are hundreds of cars like this one still being touted as Coopers.

Edited by P5BNij on Wednesday 28th February 11:35

warch

2,941 posts

183 months

Thursday 1st March 2018
quotequote all
Muddle238 said:
The other one appears to be Series 3 Land Rovers having a new front end or in some cases, just a new grille. They then declare them as a Series 2, but have the cheek to say they've "upgraded" the dash to the plastic Series 3 dashboard!!!
There was a fashion for doing just the opposite in the 80's, i.e. fitting Series 3 wings and front panel to a Series 2 or earlier type 2A so as to modernise them.

The most common one with Land Rovers of course is the Defender on black and white plates masquerading as a tax (and shortly MoT) exempt Series 2 or 3. Description usually reads:

Brand new coil sprung chassis, Tdi engine and box, disc brakes, interior upgrade etc. The cheek of it.

grumpy52

6,054 posts

195 months

Thursday 1st March 2018
quotequote all
They tend to fall into two categories,
Those that know how to make a less value model appear to be a valuable or rare model .
Those just jumping on the bandwagon of classic values without a clue of what they are looking at .
The first group, the con artists, have been around for years and are located all around the world .
The second group tend to appear during each spike in values , lots were around in the loadsa money era .

DickyC

58,301 posts

227 months

Thursday 1st March 2018
quotequote all
Mercky said:
You're misspelling misdescribing, its just not on.
Were you taken in?