My 1971 CS might be dead. I mean, really dead.

I fully agree with Rsporsch and jay . Rust that may have developed is surface rust. It won’t be as deep as you think. Furthermore there are products now available that after smooth sanding the whole car you can use to inhibit any bits of rust left (after sanding) on the surface.

Your value of 20k for a freshly and completely painted running car is way low in my opinion as well.
Personally it would be difficult for me to give up on the car.
I am so sorry to hear about your car.
Let me know if I can help anyway once you find the car...

Best wishes!
Tony P.
 
Start looking for a parking spot from now in case you find it. Like Nicad said, if you can find something at $150 for the winter, grab it and hope for the best. Then if you find it, there is a place for it to go while you assess and decide. What is it worth finished? Well, a nicely restored CS can fetch upwards of $50K. But as everyone said, depends on condition.
 
Here are some pictures of the car in the middle of the restoration. I assume there was more paint removal after this before the car went outside. To give you a little more relevant info (I didnt to type out the whole story guys, sorry), the car was apparently outside for while like this. It was around this time that the guy started stringing me along. At the time I didn't know it because he was credible up to this point and his story was plausibl. His excuse was that he was in a bad car accident and recovering and requiring various surgeries afterwards. I was in no rush and it was ok for him to take longer with the car. Also his shop is an hour drive from me and that's without traffic. Toronto traffic can be pretty bad. So getting out the shop was a chore. And, I had been there to see the work in progress and was satisifed. But during this time he was in good contact with me and I didn't suspect anything nefarious.

But now that we are where we are, it was around this time that the car was partked outside. Eye witnesses said that initially it was under a blue tarp. But the tarp blew off and was not replaced. Eventually I was getting the sign that he was evading me and he wouldn't set up a date for me to see the car. This is when I got the police involved.

Anyway... looking for your feedback on this. I am thinking with my brain on this one (not my heart).



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I'm sorry for this awful situation, and I truly mean this with no disrespect, but the feeling I get reading through all of this is that you kind of don't want to deal with the car at this point, if they recover it...which I can understand, a bit, with everything you've been strung along with. Just a crappy situation and those can make you lose the 'taste' for getting things finished..(if it's found, of course...). My humble advice, at this point, would be that, if it's recovered, find a place to hold it for a bit and take a breath...don't think about the car or all that may or may not have to be done to it, and let your head reset. Then start slowly thinking about keeping it, selling it, scrapping it, restoring it, etc... I know... it's the not knowing that drives you crazy. I hope this works out for you.
-Stephen
 
StephenZ said:
I'm sorry for this awful situation, and I truly mean this with no disrespect, but the feeling I get reading through all of this is that you kind of don't want to deal with the car at this point, if they recover it...which I can understand, a bit, with everything you've been strung along with. Just a crappy situation and those can make you lose the 'taste' for getting things finished..(if it's found, of course...). My humble advice, at this point, would be that, if it's recovered, find a place to hold it for a bit and take a breath...don't think about the car or all that may or may not have to be done to it, and let your head reset. Then start slowly thinking about keeping it, selling it, scrapping it, restoring it, etc... I know... it's the not knowing that drives you crazy. I hope this works out for you.
-Stephen
Click to expand...

I agree. I think in light of recent prices these things sell for, it's worth taking a moment and spending even $1000 more to take things into consideration and assess - unless its just painfully obvious the car is a wreck. Granted I was going based on old valuations of 5 or more years ago. The ecoconomic growth in that time has been pretty good. Also from all your suggestions I did some searching of auctions of sold CSs. I've seen prices from about $16kUS to $44kUS for a car similar to mine. With that I even think it could be a donar car with some value. There are no sold CSs on ebay at the moment but the prices for sold parts is much higher than I expected. So even as a parts car it would be valuable as it was complete and original and most trim and intrior parts were in pretty good shape. So it might be worth it to keep.

Insurance told me that regardless of what happens they will cover the first tow and storage until they make an assessment. If the police follow through with the arrest warrant then it will be a theft and if found insurance will cover these things. If they deem any damage due to the theft part of this, there will be coverage. But if the car was just absued as part of the contract work, they will not cover it and it will be a civil matter - which is another place I can get compensation. And I would add in all the storage I am paying in order to deal with the car so that might get covered in court.

Just to tally things up at the moment, $5000 paid, $1000 to recover = $6000 in. It's possible someone mighr even want to buy it in the suspected condition it will be in for that. I mean if restored in a decent but not top-notch way it might be worth $30k CAD as long as it not too far gone it might be worth that. But if the body is just eaten through all over, well I think then it might be a done deal (scrap).

All that out of the way, the latest status is the police plan to arresst soon. Then we might get the full story. The mind-bender is why is he evading me AND the police if the car is just rusted out somewhere? I don't think that would be worth risking arrest. So then where is the car? Did he need some money and sell it to someone all under the table? I just don't get it.
 
Hi Plexus -- sorry to hear of your troubles. Have you considered the fact that your restoration person may not have packed up and left voluntarily? By way of example, what if the person you contracted with had severe financial problems.

I raise this because if this were the case, he may no longer be in possession of your car. This raises for you two additional courses of action.

First, you may be able to contact the restoration person's landlord by determining who owns the property that had been used as his shop. The landlord may know how to get in contact with him. Or the landlord may also be looking for him, presenting the possibility that the two of you could work together. Alternatively, in the event your restoration person was forcibly evicted for not paying rent, the landlord may have some idea of what happened to the property in the shop (including your car).

Another possibility is that there may be some publicly available information about credit enforcement action against the restoration person. Here in the US, for example, if a creditor is going to seize your equipment because you failed to repay a loan, there is a legal process that creates a public record of the non-payment. A court may examine the creditor's assertions, record the claim, dispatch a law enforcement officer to notify the creditor of the impending seizure of property for non-payment, and create a public notice of these activities. You might want to determine if there have been non-payment related court filings against your restoration person. I don't know if a creditor in this type of situation could seize unfinished work in a restoration shop for non-payment of debt (perhaps on the theory that they could collect the value of the work done from the owner when they return the vehicle), but it is worth finding out if there is a creditor who might have seized your car.

I hope this helps.
 
I think your best bet is to hope that the car is not recovered, get 10-20 grand from your insurance co and move on.

There are other e9s out there and you can start anew.

There was a project e9 that was partially disassembled that sold on bringatrailer.com within the past year, and that could help you with your claim. Went for over 20k.

You can search past auctions to find it.
 
i know where you can find a '74 that is disassembled, rust repaired, some light surface rust that needs to be fixed ... painted and put back together. it could be bought for around 15k +/- . it includes a 5 speed (reported to be new), chrome bumpers (in lieu of the '74 diving board type) and a lot of reconditioned parts.
 
rsporsche said:
i know where you can find a '74 that is disassembled, rust repaired, some light surface rust that needs to be fixed ... painted and put back together. it could be bought for around 15k +/- . it includes a 5 speed (reported to be new), chrome bumpers (in lieu of the '74 diving board type) and a lot of reconditioned parts.
Click to expand...

I’m pretty sure that a member bought that car about three weeks ago.
 
who might that have been. i haven't spoken to Peter recently, but being that he was going to get a set of glass from me (for free) i thought i would have heard from him. i will check.
 
rsporsche said:
who might that have been. i haven't spoken to Peter recently, but being that he was going to get a set of glass from me (for free) i thought i would have heard from him. i will check.
Click to expand...

We may be speaking about apples and oranges. I’m referring to the ohio car.
 
plexus said:
And there-in lies the crux. I wont know what to do with it until its recovered. So I think I will have it towed to a scrap yard so that it's theere ready to go in the event the damage is too great to keep the car. It would be nice to find someone locally who may want it as a parts car. I just can't see myself keeping it around all rusted on the premise that sometime in the future I may get it worked on. It would just deteriorate even more.

If anyone in around the Toronto area might be interested in the car for parts let me know.

If I do scrap it, what parts are worth recovering? I was thinking the steering wheel as its a CSL leather wheel. Also perhaps those 850 rims and maybe the glass and whatever trim I can get off it? The drive train doesn't seem to be of much value - maybe the tranny but getting that out at a scrap yard is beyond my ability.
Click to expand...
Hello i'm in the toronto area and would be very interested. Sorry to hear about your troubles
 
It is possible the guy had financial problems. There are a lot of possibilities. What I know is that he said he was in a bad car accident and cited numerous health issues and procedures since then that caused him to stop work on the car. However this is what HE said. This was after I saw the car interim-restoration. Then I started asking about coming to see the car and he strung me along again about health issues related to the accident. Then he lost contact with me and that's when I started involving insurance and the police. Then I got back in touch with him and emplored him to let me see the car because now insurance/police needed me to confirm all was ok. He still strung me along citing health issues. After all that the police got involved on a "case" basis and are now working on getting an arrest warrant.

They police have engaged the landlord and the landlord doesn't know where the car is. They did evict the guy and apparenrly it was done under police facilitation with no incident.

Unfortunately the car is only insured for $8500. However if that is what I get as a payout that would cover the $5000 I paid him and $3500 to the lost value of the car. I had the car up for sale before I started the resto and best offer I had was $5000. so the insurance would almost cover everything. if the car was worth more at the time of the offer, well, out of 5 people that came to see the car, that's what I was offered. This was in 2013.

Right now I am just waiting for the cop to get back from vacation to start the warrant process. I have to give him, verbally, a chronology of everything that happened and get him all the info I have. Then I have to go in for an in-person statement. Hopefull next week they will arrest him and we can get down to what actually occurred and where the car is.

I am hoping it works out: either the car is gone and I get and insurance compensation, or the car is found and it's obvious it still has value enough to justify securing and storing. We shall see.

Maybe I'll have a good doner car available for sale.

I can also open a civil suit as well which may be worth doing.
 
Winning a civil suit may be possible or even easy given your circumstances. Collecting on a judgment can be almost impossible. The judge can order his wages garnished, but if he isn't working, shifts jobs, or gets paid cash under the table, you will have no leverage and the collection will go unpaid.

The good news is small claims court doesn't cost much and you can represent yourself. Here in the US the limit of damages you can claim is $10,000.
 
I had a situation about 30 years ago that has some similarity to this. Very short summary:

In late '80's, I had been looking for a series 1 e-type Jaguar that was 'reasonably priced'. I found one through Hemmings that had come from the near desert area of eastern Washington state with fairly substantial front end damage at a semi-restoration shop in Portland OR (3K miles away). Worked out a contract for my purchase of the car and his restoration price. Paid about 1/3 of total at the time. Progress reports were very slow. I traveled to Portland a few times on business over the next 2 years, without seeing enough progress beyond the chassis being straightened, paint stripped and primed. Finally about 6 months later, got some further pictures and a request for the second 1/3 payment. Made that, with another certified/notarized letter regarding required completion date, etc. About 6 months later, I again visited Portland to check on progress - NONE. In fact, the chassis was now no where to be found, and I concluded the man was essentially bankrupt (financially, and now probably ethically as well). I suspected the car had been finished and sold, or had been parted out in search of illegal funds. I sued for value, and won the suit, but he had no assets or ability to pay. Ended up writing this off as a loss that could not be collected on my federal taxes. Held up through and audit.

My concern is that your situation is very close to mine when it comes to resolving it. SORRY to hear about it, and hope you can come out better than I did!! I know I was too naive and trusting in my arrangements.

Gary
 
This is a terrible situation.
I would be devastated with the loss of my CS.
That said, I am happy to say SFDON has my back and I trust him completely.
 
Thanks all for your feedback, support and stories. Gary that is really sad to hear and parallels my story. This guy I gave the job to was at the time looking legit - with a real shop, real tools and had a number of cars there he was working on. the workmanship looked good, which I saw with my own eyes. plus a plethora of photos of cars he'd finished. There was nothing to suggest this was risky beyond the usual risks one would encounter. Of course yes going to even more established shops would mitigate those risks but the cost of the restoration reflects that - I corresponded with some of these shops who pretty much told me they'd not touch a restoration of CS unless it was at least $40,000-100,000. Which of course is ridiculous unless you are aiming for this kind of quality. I just wanted my car fixed up properly, the rust repaireed as best as possible and repainted so I could sell the car in good conscious.

This week presumably the cop will be back on the job and we'll get to the bottom of this. I can't decide anything at this point without first seeing the car. I am going to try and find a place to have the car towed in Toronto so at least it will be close by me in the event I a) want to retain the car to sell it or b) scrap it. It really depends on the condition of the car if they find it.
 
Further to my original thought, might it be possible to obtain more detail on how the landlord evicted this guy? By way of example, if your guy was unresponsive, and the landlord wanted him out, he may have paid someone to clean out the place. It is possible that the person who cleaned out the shop was allowed (legally) to removed and either keep or disposed of anything that was left in the shop, including your car.
 
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