Better Beaters - Building Cars and Daily Drivers

Legends of the Fall: Part Two

Let's take a quick look at an even bigger Legend. The fearsome Nissan Skyline. This car earned it's laurels as a serious high performance car. I am only somewhat familiar with the story of these cars. What attracted me to them is their very aggressive appearance.

Since I was a fan and involved with early Datsun Z cars, I learned about this racier relation of the Z. The Skyline was produced by a rival Japanese manufacturer, Prince, that was eventually incorporated into the Nissan company. 

These things are real lookers.

There have been many different types of Skylines produced over the years, Even four door sedans. The coupes have a four taillight back panel as one of their styling trademarks.

This is the view that the completion gets to see.

2024 model.

The Skyline is still in production. However, I'm still not any closer to affording one than I was years ago. But... If I ever had the opportunity to own a hyper performance car, it would absolutely be this one!

So what was the point of this digression?

I have mentioned that the second gen Legend coupe had a bit of that Skyline swagger, at least to my eyes. These cars are very expensive, with some models selling for 200,000.00. So it's not something that the average enthusiast would be likely to ever own.

Since I'll never be able to afford an actual Skyline, would it be possible to make a Legend coupe look a bit like a Skyline? 

But maybe there's another path?

I recently found a customized Legend coupe on CL. It was modified to look like a Nissan Skyline. It is fitted with a wide body kit. It has several issues, including a lot of non functioning accessories like a/c,  the passenger window, and who knows what else. The biggest problem is that the seller doesn't have the pink slip, and the car was never transferred to him. This creates a huge hassle, and many times the car can't ever be registered to a new owner and it ends up as a parts car. The seller is asking 3,000.00 or B/O. 

Still, Legend coupes are rare, and this one was nearby, and I think that Skylines are super cool, so I contacted the owner to take a look. 

I will admit that photos in the ad are not high quality so it's hard to judge the condition of the body work.

Mismatched wheels and oxidized paint.

That rear end view is pretty neat with the Skyline style quad tail lights.

The interior features custom fitted seat covers front and rear. The door panels look okay, from what I could see in the photos.

I arranged to check out the car, the seller is a very busy young man, so I agreed to meet him at his convenience. I'd seen a lot of cars with poorly installed aftermarket body kits. The poorly attached and fit bumpers, and fiberglass wide body fenders, loose and flapping in the wind. As well air extractors featuring wire mesh sourced from the Home Depot. 

In many ways I was quite surprised when I saw the car in person.

The body kit was well done, everything looked professionally installed, and the components looked to be of high quality. Body seams were molded smooth. The rear bumper and air extractors were extremely well done. The stance was perfect, and the seller had put a set of matching wheels on the car. He told me that this was a former show car. The CL ad had stated that it was wired for subwoofers and under glow lighting.

Truthfully I was impressed. I had the seller take me for a ride and the engine seemed to run well and the transmission shifted okay. The exhaust note was not too loud. He told me that it had just developed a coolant leak, "somewhere in the back of the engine" but he hadn't identified the cause yet.

The interior was rough, but the seat covers were in good shape except for a split in the driver's seat bottom cushion. The doors had a couple of big holes cut in for speakers and parts of the dash, like the ventilation bezels were cracked and broken. Tracking down replacements for these parts could be difficult.

However the biggest problem was the paperwork. The seller claimed that he had bought the car from a buddy who had lost the pink slip. The ad said that he had all the necessary paperwork filled out and ready for the buyer to make the transfer. He added that there weren't any fees due as it had been placed on non op.

I looked at the paperwork and it only looked partially filled out. It consisted of a couple of pages of DMV statement of fact sheets. However he didn't have any official documents, like a registration card that could help establish who was the owner, and had the right to actually sell it. Without that, the buyer would have to take everything on faith, and the facts wouldn't be revealed, until they were at the DMV in person. Any discrepancies would have to get ironed out by the buyer.

I have twice bought cars from an estate sale. The first was my '89 Jaguar XJS. The title was not held in either/or status by the surviving spouse, and it would require a copy of the death certificate of the registered owner. I really didn't know what was needed, and I was dealing with the deceased owner's son in law, it's hard to talk to survivors about the deceased person's car. The price was right, so I bought the car anyway. The seller lived in Southern California and after many months I corresponded with the widow and she agreed to meet me with the necessary documents. I also had her sign some DMV papers. I eventually got legal title in my name.

My second estate purchase, my '51 Jaguar, went through seamlessly. The owner's son had the papers all filled out and stapled together. Unfortunately, AAA wouldn't handle the estate transfer and I had to go to a DMV office.

When I bought my motorcycle, last year, it was a lien sale, and my local AAA office wouldn't handle the transfer. I ended up going to the DMV, without an appointment. I spent several hours waiting in line to take care of this. 

I told the seller of the Legend that I'd have to think about it. The car has a number of challenges, it is a project that will need quite a bit of work, but the biggest challenge is the paperwork. The seller couldn't even provide a copy of an old registration card, which would at least be an official document that would identify who was the registered owner. Since this is such an old car, I doubt that it is owned by a finance company or bank, the R/O was likely to be the legal owner.

I copied down the VIN and the license plate number and I told the seller that I would check with AAA to see what was needed.

The person at the AAA office ran the VIN and verified that the car was on non op with no fees due. She asked the name of the seller and all I knew was his first name, she told me that he was not the last owner on record, and no paperwork existed with that first name on it. Well, at least it didn't come back as a stolen car! The lady advised me that I would need a bill of sale from the last registered owner to the seller, and one from that seller to me. She could not give me the name of the registered owner, due to privacy restrictions.

I realized that it might not be impossible to transfer the car, but that it might be improbable. Did the seller really know the last registered owner? Could he contact them to sign any papers that might be needed, and would that person be willing to go to the DMV with the seller and me if necessary? I strongly doubted that. Would the current seller be available to go to the DMV with me to sign anything needed? 

I'm not implying that the seller is doing anything shady, he probably wasn't aware of what would be needed to transfer the car when he bought it. I can assume that he didn't want to deal with the hassle of transferring the car into his name before trying to sell it. I can understand that; he'd have to pay the transfer fee as well as the use tax. He just wants to get rid of the car, not spend time and money at the DMV.

When I was selling my Riviera last year, I couldn't find the pink slip, right as I was showing the car to a serious buyer. He liked the car and would have paid me and taken the car right then. Except that I didn't have the pink. I told him that we could do the transfer at any AAA office, and I'd go with him so the pink wasn't necessary, as I'd file an application stating that I'd lost it. Of course that didn't fly, he was busy and didn't have time for that and I (perhaps stupidly) didn't want to drive up to Redwood City to meet at his convenience. He was willing to pay my asking price for the car, The deal fell through. I cancelled my ad on CL and I went to AAA and filed for a new pink slip. When It arrived three weeks later, I re-listed the car and sold it; at a lower price. Of course.

I have never intended to mislead the seller of my intent. I do find the car to interesting and worth saving. It's true that my own personal situation is not currently conducive to buying anything, as I've wanted to reduce my fleet, not expand it. But it's a Legend! And it's cool!

So I have my own issues with buying anything, let alone something with title issues, which would have to be cleared up before I'd buy it, in any case. It's also a bit more of a project than I really need to take on at the moment, or even at any time. In my old age I'm less enthusiastic about working on any car.

So right now the whole idea is sitting in Limbo, I might suggest that the seller get the car titled to him. This would definitely make it much easier to sell, if not to me, then to someone else. 

I'm going to keep my eyes on CL and see if he does anything to fix the problem.