FINALLY Titled
No pictures here, just a long story. Way too long of a story actually. When we purchased this old Gal she was basically abandoned in a field with the interior stripped out but in the trunk, insides full of junk from other cars, and a bit worse for wear.
The biggest worry about the whole thing was NO TITLE. The seller had a story about how it was a car that grandpa had and it had been in the family for a while. The grand kids decided to rebuild it and thus started tearing out the interior pieces but then lost interest or were in over their head and got rid of it. He got the car from a trade and was going to use the 302 engine, which was apparently swapped out years ago in place of the original inline 6 the car is coded with but he didn’t have a title.
We were promised it was easy in Oklahoma, just do a Title 42 on it and get the title processed that way. Sounded easy enough and with that apprehension of buying something without a title we took the bill of sale and handed over the $550. I asked around about the Title 42 process and found things had changed since the seller had used it. Title 42 laws changed the first of the year in 2016 and now it was much harder to do. I ended up finding a small company that would process the Title42 since I had never done it before and handed over another $100 as a deposit for the process.
The company owner knew things were changing but felt it wouldn’t be a problem… but it was. He processed the paperwork, send out the notices, and then promptly received a declination letter from the state. Seems they were basically denying every Title 42 submission until they figured out the new laws. The big down side was if you resubmitted the same car for another Title42 attempt and it was denied, you could brick the title and never be able to get one in the state. Not good.
At that point we stepped back, but the car under a tarp and asked around more about how to proceed. Some said find out who the title may be under and go talk to them, others thought re-try Title 42, and others talked about talking the case to court. Nothing seemed really appealing for a $550 purchase with $650 currently invested. We really didn’t want to spend much build money on legal bull. Finally I contacted the company that tried the Title 42 and wanted to get a copy of the paperwork, denial, etc for our records and had planned on talking to an attorney about the deal to find the best way to move forward or if it was even worth while.
When I called the Title 42 company, he immediately said he had a better way of processing these situations through a court ordered title and he would take the paperwork and proceed that way if we wanted to. We would have to fork out the remaining $175 that we would have paid for the Title 42 process but no other court or legal fees would be levied. Worth a try at this point with nothing else to really lose.
Fortunately this process went better and we received the paperwork that could be used to go claim the title in our name and move on. There were penalty charges, unlike the vendor said there would be, but we did finally get a clean title with a court order to back it up. So for the $550 car, we ending up spending $575 to actually make it ours. Lesson learned is never buy a car without a title anymore. Not worth the heartburn to me.
Good news is process will now continue for bringing the old Gal back from being abandoned in a field and to live with a new small block ford power plant.
