Two Corvettes With The Same VIN Is Either Fraud Or Proof Of The Multiverse

 That's exactly what happened to one Florida resident, who found out that there is another 1962 Chevrolet Corvette wearing the same VIN as his. Now he's suing to have a judge decide which car is the real one and which one is carrying around a fake ID.

The Houston Chronicle reported on the lawsuit and the trouble deciding which Corvette is the real one. Dale Wilkinson, the report says, bought his 1962 C1 Corvette in 2006 when he lived in Massachusetts. The problem arose in 2022 when he moved to Florida and tried to register the car there. He was told by state officials that there was another Corvette with the same VIN already registered in Texas.

Owner Suspects Second Corvette Is A Fake

Wilkinson claimed the couple that owned the other car registered it in Texas and got a new title after he told them he suspected theirs was fake. He accused them of "disparagement of title" in the suit. He does not, the report says, believe that they were involved in building the duplicate car.

An expert hired by Wilkinson determined that the Texas car was the clone, based on its VIN tag. The expert said the tag was made from aluminum rather than steel and that it used an incorrect font. The "clone" was said to have just 1,283 miles on the odometer, an extremely low number for a car that is old enough to collect social security. Wilkinson's 1962 'Vette had 56,000 miles on it when he made the purchase.

The alleged fake was purchased by its current owners at a Mecum auction in 2022. Mecum is not named in the suit, as Wilkinson's attorney told the Chronicle that auction houses insulated themselves legally from inauthentic cars and functioned as a middleman.

Fake Car Will Get A Big Hit To Its Value

This suit isn't just about the cars having two Vehicle Identification Numbers (VINs). As neither appears to be stolen and both seem to have been purchased legally, there are processes in place to make sure that one of the cars can receive a new VIN. That is where the problem resides.

Wilkinson claims that whichever car is the one not declared to be authentic will see a serious hit in value. An expert report submitted claims that the car declared a fake and assigned a new VIN could lose as much as $110,000 in potential value if it were to be sold.

The car believed to be the alleged clone sold at auction for $126,500 in 2022, so taking $110k off the price would be a massive hit indeed.

While fakes are not common, they're also not rare. The right VIN and a numbers-matching car increase the value immensely on the right model. A builder can get a serial number from a car believed to have been destroyed in order to avoid building a duplicate. But when you're (allegedly) making fakes, things happen.