I looked at a car tonight, and wrote down the VIN number from the insurance card. The plan was to check it out on carmax, but carmax and autocheck both came back with zero results.

Also according to the VIN, it's a 5.0, but the car is a 73,000 mile V6.

I'm wondering if something is fishy, and why in the world would a vin number read a V8 if it actually had a V6? the car is really in good shape, it's hard to imagine somebody removed the 5.0 and installed the 2.8

is this some sort of scam?

 

IIRC, all Thirdgens indicate the engine on the eighth digit of the VIN number. Knowing the year and letter used would indicate the engine it originally came with. Ie. and '85 with the letter/number 1 would be a V6 while G,F or H would be different V8's available.

 

it's an 89

8th digit is an F

I just wrote the seller, asking him to double check the number against the Title and the VIN tag. I copied it off the insurance card

 

Always get the vin off the dash. Chances are the insurance card is out of a different car or it was a typo.

 

I hope that's all it is. That would describe why the carfax came back with zero results, because the VIN for the car I traced doesn't exist

 

I don't know why the insurance card had the wrong VIN, but I just got the new number and it checked out. I'm glad I did the autocheck, because it confirmed that the odometer has rolled over.
I'm still interested in the car, but there's a big difference in a car that has 73K vs one with 173K

 

I know that this is a little off topic, but it may explain what happened...

There was an instance in the 70's where an owner had a 1969 GTO Judge, and a 1969 standard LeMans. How it stared out he bought himself a Judge, and his mother liked it so much that she bought a LeMans. In short, a few years later they sold the LeMans, signed the title over, dropped the insurance etc...

Fast forward 30 years... The owner of the Judge went to PHS for an information packet and he got it and it said it was a LeMans... He called up Jim and argued with him... As it turend out when they sold the LeMans, they actually signed the title of the GTO over to the new owner some 30 years earlier...

(The story is something like that, you would have to contact Jim about the exact specifics, but that is the gist.)

It is possible he has insurance on the wrong car...

The moral of the story is when you buy (or sell) a car, always check the VIN to the title...

John

 

i KWYM. I've got two 97 pontiacs, and i'm constantly dropping one and adding one off of insurance depending on the weather (i dont drive it in the warmer months because it doesn't have AC)

everytime I call my agent to ad or drop it, I'm always wondering if they are going to drop the CORRECT one

he's looking for the title to the RS. when he locates it, I'm planing on buying it, unless something strange happens