[DeTomaso] Another E-bay scam...

[MikeLDrew at aol.com]

In a message dated 12/7/10 10 58 16, gndplne at yahoo.com writes:


> Since Mikey started this tirade, he will clean it up.  I'm sure Mike will 
> contact the guy and we'll all get to the bottom of this, so stay tuned.  
> If the guy is a straight-up guy, Mikey will say he jumped the gun and the 
> guy is actually good.  If the guy is trying to pull a fast one, Mikey will 
> jump up and tell us he was right! :)
> 

>>>I had tried to contact him initially, asking the types of pointed 
questions you typically offer up to Nigerian scam artists, and got no reply, which 
is why I suspected this was one of the numerous Pantera scam auctions that 
we've seen over the years, and put forth the warning as appropriate in such 
instances.

Guy finally got back to me tonight, and he has an interesting tale to tell. 
  He didn't realize that the way he worded his auction made it sound like 
he was selling the car without a title or a VIN.   In fact, he has both of 
those but wanted to conceal them from everyone but the buyer.   That's a 
rather curious thing to do, but he said that if he failed to sell it as-is, he'd 
restore it and then try to get $50K for it, and he didn't want the Pantera 
community 'outing' the car as one that was formerly offered up as a basket 
case.

I don't really think that's a legit argument, myself.   If a car is fully 
restored, who cares if it started as a rust-free basket case?   In fact I'd 
think that would make it more desirable, not less.

Anyway, he thanked me for the heads-up and said that he reworded the 
auction.   He used to work for George Stauffer and sold several of the 
high-profile cars to George, such as the Govoni Gr4 Pantera and a Gr3 race car as well 
(probably Dale Eriksen's car?), plus a bunch of new and used GT5 Panteras 
that George subsequently resold.

Interestingly, he also owned Patrick Hals Candy car for 10 years, raced it, 
restored it, then drove it on the streets of Georgia!

I'm glad he stepped forward to clear up the confusion.   While I still 
think it's a dubious practice to offer a car for sale and conceal its identity, 
at least we now know the reasoning behind it.   Whether people will choose 
to bid on it or not remains to be seen....

Mike