Stolen!!! E type series 1

[rookie]

[quote="Mich7920"]Hi Rooky,
Did you use the "contact" at the bottom of the page ?
The admin is very reactive normaly
I hope a happy end for your trouble...
Mich[/quote]
Not sure? Filled in all up to date data by editing current link posted earlier on this thread. Still says it going through admin stages to be approved and won't let any further editing to be done.

[rookie]

[quote="andrewh"]Seriously sad news, and close by to us in Kent. I will keep my eyes peeled for this. Have you got it on Piston Heads? Well worth putting it on the Jaguar board and the Yesterdays Heroes board. there are thousands of car blokes on that forum.[/quote]
Been posted on piston heads forum under Classics. JDC, JEC, Hagerty etc have got things listed so well publicised. Put reg no. of car in Google search. (827 dxd) to see different links.
Main thing is the more people aware of it, we may be lucky in still finding it hopefully in one piece.

[andrewh]

Well I do hope you will find it , there is a good chance its a silly chance theft and it will be turn up in a lock up. I reckon these thefts of classics are becoming just too regular and I am now going to look into some sort of tracker security .

[rookie]

Still missing.

Article regarding theft on Kent Online.

http://www.kentonline.co.uk/dover/news/ ... es-102965/

[rookie]

Still missing. Please keep a look out. Thanks.

[andrewh]

How utterly depressing for all of us that this car is still missing. Mind you if the authorities cannot stop humans from entering the country illegally I doubt they can stop E types leaving the country .

[PeterCrespin]

I find it depressing that my 69 merely shows up as not taxed or MOT'd, after being stolen over four years ago.

[andrewh]

yes it is Peter. But thinking on your situation, surely if the car is flagged everywhere that it is stolen it will be more likely to be broken up for spares? If someone buys it and tries to tax it then you will find it. Not so good for the buyer as he will be in possession of stolen goods which would presumably, depending upon which legal jurisdiction its under, be returned to you?

[richard btype]

Thinking the same Andrew, the safest easiest route for these rodents is to break and sell the spares….

[JagWaugh]

yes it is Peter. But thinking on your situation, surely if the car is flagged everywhere that it is stolen it will be more likely to be broken up for spares? If someone buys it and tries to tax it then you will find it. Not so good for the buyer as he will be in possession of stolen goods which would presumably, depending upon which legal jurisdiction its under, be returned to you?

The question is if there is a central database of all stolen cars, even within the EU? Furthermore, does every country actually check if a car has been registered as stolen anywhere when someone goes to register it?

I'll have to ask the next time I am at a Swiss MOT, the last two cars that I took through the importation process here it seemed that MOT inspector was only interested if the number on the registration document matched the number stamped on the car, and if the same number appeared on the customs form which attested that the import duties had been paid.

[288gto]

Re registering a stolen car aside, given that E type engines are being listed on E bay for upwards of £3000 and gearboxes £1000 it would be nice if there was indeed some sort of database to check against for the provenance of these major items.

Simon

[JagWaugh]

Just as a followup on my earlier post, here is a quote from another forum which I follow here:

5 weeks ago a colleague had his car pinched in Geneva. Colleague lives in France and it's a French registered car.

While swimming in the lake; their unsecured bag, with keys was nicked. Carte gris was in the car.

Colleague was kicking themselves in the ass for being so damn careless. They were honest with the insurer, who are dissatisfied with the circumstances and there's an ongoing claim discussion.

Fast forward to this week and colleague receives a strange call. "We just bought this nice car from your son in France, with key and registration documents etc, we're a Geneva based car dealer, we have a few doubts and want to just double check with you that everything is straight".

Colleague replies "I don't have a son, the car is mine, it was stolen, what's your name, address, details can you please report this to the Police etc?"

Caller replies, "actually, we've sold car already and don't have it anymore, we'll erm, call you back tomorrow, bye!". The caller did not withhold their number.

On the off chance, colleague jumps in car (daughter's!) to main border crossing to ask customs officers if they recall such a car recently being imported into Geneva.

One officer he asks grunts, shrugs, points to colleague who dealt with the car from the previous day. Officer pulls the file, which has name, address, garage details of the importer in Geneva.

Supervisor of border crossing gets a little bent out of shape because officer who dealt with the import didn't check the VIN code against a database (my colleague thinks Interpol?). He checks the VIN against said database in his office, sees the car is stolen, accepts my colleagues evidence of ownership, sighs deeply and goes back inside his office to make a call.

Police arrive, story is retold, they take all details, tell my colleague to go home and wait for their call.

4 hours later colleague receives a call from Police. When they arrived at the car garage, they found the car, not yet passed to new owners and in good shape. Police "secured" the car while they figure next steps, which could take days or weeks.

My colleague genuinely doesn't know who now has legal right to claim ownership of the car.

More importantly, if someone buys a previously stolen car in good faith from a garage, would they have discovered it was stolen at the point they try to get it registered?

Colleague is wondering how the frick a car dealer could be so dumb to not do their homework before they bought the car. Colleague smiles politely when reminded how the car was stolen.

[ca1066]

I am a lawyer in South Africa but doubt that the law governing ownership of a stolen item can differ in French or Swiss law . Basically ownership remains vested in the original owner ( your colleague ) until there is a valid causa eg.sale to pass ownership. He should be able to retain possession and ownership and the end purchaser would have to claim from the dealer . If there is more than one sale it creates a chain reaction of claims , with the original owner retaining ownership. At least that's how it works in our law.
Good luck !

[JagWaugh]

Paul,

I agree, the legal ownership issue is probably fairly clear and regulated with only a few nations as exceptions. But this doesn't make any difference unless the detection of a stolen car works well enough to alert either the legal owner or a potential (or actual) buyer.

The fact that even in here in meticulous Switzerland the stolen car crossed the border despite being registered as stolen is a bigger problem than the legal situation, to my mind.

Particularly as the same customs guys will surely spot it if you carry more than your allowed 2kg of meat, or declare some of your purchase as "Bones for Dog food" (which is exempt) and they spot that it has more than 20% by weight meat on the bones. (Absolutely everything is regulated here.)

[rookie]

Just to update this thread, the car still has not been found. I managed to get xkedata.com site updated with the car's details. So please keep looking for 827 dxd as still at large. Been around a month since stolen.
Noticed that we are not the only ones to loose an e type recently. (Looking at other posting under welcome section). Hope the owner has better luck than my father. Thanks.

[PeterCrespin]

I feel your pain, in stereo, having lost two.

The last few days mine has been unavoidably parked outside and just about visible from a quiet country road in a nice neighbourhood. A few years ago I'd have been relaxed and proud in equal measure. Nowadays, I am nervous of people knowing I own an E-type. Word gets around. Lord only knows what it will be like with a D next to it. Bars on windows, steel doors, bollards, cameras...

This is no way to feel about a hobby. It can all be laid at the door of spiralling values many were so happy about a few years ago. Well now it's done. Cough up your fat premium, festoon the thing with trackers and pray you don't lose it. In ten years time high-milers like Chris and David will be regarded as mad, eccentric, or both.

Pete

[Durango2k]

Very wise post, Pete.

As I say, rising values help millionaires, and literally squeeze out the family man (like me).

In my case it's only a 2+2 but the yard it is stored has 4 holiday appartments which are often populated by macedonians, albanians, polish guys working on construction sites and so on. All I can do is insure it and keep the doors locked whenever I am there.

But how to take it out when people I would not trust are sitting in front of the shed watching my collection ?

Carsten, sleepless

[ianjmcleod]

To air my frustrations and (hopefully) provide some advice based on my experience of car theft I'd just like to make the following points. My car (XK120 but keep reading) was stolen from a hotel car park within 20 minutes of collecting it from a very reputable Jaguar workshop. My conclusion from that is that I was followed by the thieves who were waiting outside. There's lesson one - look out! The police were totally useless througout the whole process: it took several days before they even looked at the hotel CCTV. The car was obviously (?) stolen to order and it was in a container within minutes of the theft - which renders Trakkers etc useless - though they aren't much use anyway in my opinion as a) they need a mobile phone signal and b) the police are too incompetent or indifferent to act on them. Anyone reporting a car theft will know that the "process" is the same whether it's a 250GTO or a 1995 Ford Fiesta. They (eventually) put the reg number on a database and - to quote what they actually said - "wait for it to turn up in a ram raid or burnt out, that's what usually happens". I am very confident, for a range of reasons, that my car, and those of the unfortunate victims I've just read about was our of the UK within days if not hours of the theft. Containers for export are not checked and there is a ready market for cars such as we are concerned with in Eastern Europe and beyond where there are no meaningful checks on provenance.

The next problem is insurance: don't be fooled (as I was) into believing that "classic car" insurance means anything at all. To quote my then insurer it is "just a marketing wrapper". A "Market value" clause is worth having but you really have fight for it. Not only is the classic car "wrapper" meaningless but claims are not settled by the insurer anyway: the whole process is outsourced to a "specialist" to whom I was instantly referred when I reported the theft. Having explained the circumstances of my 1952 XK120 FHC theft, quoting the chassis number, reg etc the response I got on the phone was: "I can give a value right now if you can answer a few more questions: petrol or diesel, 2 door or 4 door". I pointed out to the "specialist" that perhaps he should do a little more research on the car before establishing a value but he assured me that was not necessary as they handle "65% of all claims in the UK". He duly advised me that subject to a satisfactory claim form and appropriate checks I would be paid £6000 - under 10% of the actual market value. To cut a very long story short, I eventually got £65000, an essential aid to this, without which I would definitely not have succeeded, was a written valuation from two of the top Jaguar people in the UK who were able to demonstrate that they'd seen the car in the past few months. I think that is probably the main lesson from all this. Sadly if your car is stolen you won't get it back so as well as getting as well insured as possible, make sure you can PROVE what that actual car was worth before it dissapeared.

[mgcjag]

Thats why you should get an agreed valuation policy.......

[ianjmcleod]

"agreed valuation" can be equally meaningless unless you can prove the value at the time of the theft - insurance companies will say "yes" to anything in order to get your premium but it's a different story when it comes to paying out because the decision maker (the outsourced settlement agency) is not the entity which "agreed" the valuation. In fact when my car was stolen the policy had "agreed valuation" (£65k) or current market value whichever was higher, nevertheless their initial offer was under 10% of that.