MTFCA Forum

My car that I dumped my savings into to buy as a kid, and was subsequently lifted by a museum and then given the cold shoulder "We know nothing' stinkeye... I know, I snivel about this a lot, but even 20 years on,losing something I put every penny I saved for a decade and a half, just to have someone take it from me wihtout nothing more than an FY, just burns me. I NEVER expect Towe Ford to come clean on this, because they told me my pink slip is somehow invalid.

$2500 in 1976 (as a 15 year old kid), and another 7 years chasing and swapping parts... No one will help make it right, not in the club, not anywhere, so I expect to never see my car, my merc body, or any of those parts again.

Nope, my restored and running '20 chassis, my blood and sweat and all the time I put into her, will never be found by me. And it will eat me until the day I croak. Because that was my "model T" childhood, and it was stolen without any conscience.

Susanne, how did Towe get possession of your car without your permission?

My dad was on their board for a number of years, and had it (along with a number of his cars) there as part of a display. I figured it was fine as it protected the chassis and eventually (after the dust sttled from my divorce) dad and I could get back to building it - by then,we had also accumulated a number of parts to build it into a speedster (orange merc body, muncie trans, buffalo wheels, fronty head, etc...) and I was hoping it could finally get on the road. All this was stored at Towe.

Then my dad got sick, went downhill fast, and passed on about a year later. I realized I'd better get the car and parts out of there, as we no longer had a tie to the museum... went down there and when I went to retrieve it and the parts, they told me they had no such agreement, that the car must have been donated by someone... I brought the pink in, they said OK, let us have it and we'll get it "processed", you can pick it up in a couple weeks (and dummy naive me, I believed them)... and when I went back, yep, no pink, no process, gee, we don't know anything about this... now please leave, you are not welcome here, and we'll call the cops and have you arrested.

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All in all, it totally made me lose faith in old car museums. Especially that one. Honestly, I have no idea what kind of "arrangement" my dad may have made with them; I'm just still pissed that my car, the one I paid for and put serious money into as a kid, and the parts we'd accumulated toward the project, got taken from me without anything other than a threat of arrest for wanting it back.

BTW - I still keep the key on my keyring. And I still keep an eye out for the motor number. Hell, I'd even pay for it a second time if I had to (it'd piss me off, but I understand it's been a long time)... I just want the car I bought, restored with my dad, and was building while he was still kicking, back.

Thats all. I need to go cool off. Every time I think about it it makes me sad.

Why did you not contact the state DMV and simply pay for a duplicate and then hire a lawyer?
I do not doubt your story one bit. Have seen similar, but there didn't seem much of a fight on your end based on what you have stated.
None of my business, or anyone else's of course.
Yours is one of several cautionary stories I have heard...the last one was of a forum member leaving his dad's hack on display at a living museum and finding it had been kept on "display" in an open air lean-to and had really gone to seed. That was a sad story, too.

You have something in writing that says the car is yours - a title.

Do they have anything in writing from your Dad that says the car is theirs?

You should talk to a lawyer about this.