Authentic or expert fake? Due diligence may tell

Eyebrows rose in the collector car world early this year when Christie's announced that an important Grand Prix race car from the 1930s -- with the potential to become the most expensive car ever sold at auction, Christie's said -- would be offered at the Retromobile exhibition in Paris. Presale publicity from the auction house set high expectations, anticipating bids from $12 million to $15 million, which would easily have topped the $8.7 million price of a Bugatti Royale sold in 1987.

The race car was a 12-cylinder Auto Union D-type, one of about 20 built by the German car company that included Audi. Initial research indicated it was chassis No. 21, the winner of the 1939 French Grand Prix.

But before the February auction took place, Christie's, working with Audi Tradition, keeper of the automaker's records, determined it was actually chassis No. 19. That car competed in the 1939 race, but finished sixth with Hans Stuck behind the wheel.

Christie's disclosed the findings and withdrew the car from the sale. A specialist for Christie's, Christopher Sanger, said, "While we were disappointed to not publicly sell the D-type because of the provenance, we take these issues very seriously; fortunately, we got it right."

That the history of even such a well-researched car could prove wrong points out the challenges facing buyers of vintage cars. While the Auto Union situation did not involve any intent to deceive a buyer, increasing values of collector cars create a temptation for unscrupulous sellers to misrepresent their offerings.

That's where the experts come in.

"This has been a problem for years with race cars and many of the classics," says Deane Fehrman of Golden, Colo., an automobile appraiser and a Fellow of the American Society of Appraisers.

"With race cars, it's tough to tell if what you have is what ran the race," Fehrman said, referring to the many changes in equipment that can happen over a race car's competitive life. Numbers, if used at all, were mostly just internal ways of keeping inventory, and not identifiers of individual vehicles.

As in the world of fine art, the most elaborate attempts to misrepresent cars occur where the profit potential is greatest. That was the case with a Ferrari sold by Lord Brockett, a British collector who got involved in the heady world of Ferrari sales in the 1980s, when rising prices seemed destined to continue.

Brockett commissioned a reproduction of a Ferrari 250 SWB, or short wheel base, to be built on the chassis of a far less valuable 250 GTE 2+2, and to hide the fraud the car was given the serial number of a long-missing 250 SWB. The legitimate car later turned up; Brockett ended up in jail for a variety of offenses, including an insurance scheme involving five cars he had cut up and buried on the family estate. He is now a motivational speaker.

Such forgeries may be getting harder to conceal. Ferrari has recently instituted a program, Ferrari Certificato di Identificazione, which issues a heritage certificate. Owners can have details of their cars' originality verified, including factory options and, in many cases, the original owner or seller.

Other automakers are providing help with finding out if a car is what it purports to be, or at least what it was when it was built. This is particularly useful for American cars of the 1960s and '70s. The availability of used and reproduction parts makes it relatively easy for an unscrupulous seller to create a clone, or replica, muscle car from a more common model -- which is, of course, exactly what automakers did in making a car like the Pontiac GTO from a Tempest.

Pontiac Historic Services maintains copies of factory records for many of its early products. It can provide Pontiac owners or prospective buyers with a copy of the factory invoice or billing history for their specific car as well as a letter that translates the factory option codes.

For Dodge, Plymouth, Chrysler, and DeSoto vehicles, the DaimlerChrysler Corporate Historical Collection in Detroit has information on many individual cars built between 1930 and 1967. Build information for models stored on IBM punch cards is available for a fee.

Galen Govier of Prairie du Chien, Wis., can go a step further with Chrysler cars, specifically those built in the 1960s and 1970s. Govier is an authenticator, a car sleuth who makes his living determining the originality of cars. An appraiser's job, on the other hand, is to place a value on a car based on information provided by an owner.

"We look at the dashboard VIN, the door VIN decal, the fender tag, what Chrysler calls the body code plate," he said, using the abbreviation for the vehicle identification number. "Many cars have a build sheet in the springs under the back seat, but it's not always right."

If two or more cars were being built with the same interior color at the same time, there was a possibility of an unintended switch of seat and build sheet.

"One back seat looks just like the other," Govier said. "You could have wound up with someone else's. Some cars have two or three build sheets, others none."

Govier suggested another place to look is under the carpets of the car for an additional build sheet. But finding the paperwork may not clear up all the mysteries, as errors may have occurred. Govier said he knows of a handful of cars where the original codes indicate they were built with one set of options, but ended up with others.

Owners of 1967-73 Ford, Lincoln, or Mercury cars can turn to Kevin Marti of El Mirage, Ariz., for help. Interest in collecting information came at an early age to Marti, who still owns his first car, a 1967 Mercury Cougar that he bought in 1973.

Many of his clients are not so fortunate. "I get lots of phone calls that start, 'When I was a kid, I bought a 1969 Mustang Mach I that I sold a few years later,' " Marti said.

After asking questions about the selling dealer, the original color, the engine, and the equipment, Marti can search records to find the original serial number of the car to help former owners track down their long-lost loves.

Marti Auto Works is a licensee of Ford Motor, which retains many of its records.

"One of the big things we can do is access Ford's records and accurately decode them to show owners the equipment on their car from new," Marti said. He estimates that 80 percent to 90 percent of his customers want information about Mustangs, including Shelby models, because of the ease of building clones to inflate the value of a plain-Jane six-cylinder.

Chevrolet owners are not so lucky, as factory records are not available. Owners have learned to rely on window stickers and the paper trail provided by the original owner in the rare case it still exists. Some Corvettes have broadcast sheets attached to the top of the gas tanks, a production record of the car without a serial number reference.

Clubs can be helpful as well. Mark Napoli of Palm Bay, Fla., is a judge with the National Corvette Restorers Society. Part of his job is authenticating what is and what is not original on 1965 Corvettes.

"We have a judging guide that we go by," Napoli said, "but sometimes the guide is a bit off."

In such cases, the judges must rely on their ability to tell the real from the reproduction, the add-on from the original.

"Until someone finds the original records, that's what we go by," Napoli said.