Jalopnik
Just when we thought there would be a break from the Unique Performance Saga, we get word that things were even more rotten in the city of Farmers Branch. First, an investigation by CBS11-TV has turned up solid evidence that unskilled Texas prisoners were used to do the bodywork on the replica "Eleanor" Mustangs, including removing the VIN plates (which is illegal). Second, the poorly built cars cost upwards of $200,000 yet were built using approximately 13 gallons of Bondo each. Third, the U.S. Secret Service and Texas Department of Public Safety (state police) have launched investigations. Fourth, this may impact the way the prison system work program is implemented. Finally, according to authorities charges are imminent (probably fraud and title-washing to start). More pictures from the evidence locker (everything comes from Taiwan), a statement from Unique Performance owner Doug Hasty's lawyer and a quick primer for those that haven't been following the case below the jump.
Just when we thought there would be a break from the History
After the success of Gone In 60 Seconds, Unique Performance with the blessing of Carroll Shelby started building "Eleanor" replicas. Turns out that most of those replicas may have been built with salvage or otherwise questionably titled Mustangs and, despite taking huge deposits, weren't being delivered. After being raided by police and shut down, the company filed for bankruptcy and refused to pay Unique Performance employees. That's where we stood before these latest revelations.
Statement From Doug Hasty's Lawyer
Every customer that has received a car has ultimately been satisfied with the quality of the car they received. Farmers Branch Police are continuing their witch hunt. They continue to leak false accusations to the press knowing that we have not had an opportunity to have access to the cars to rebut their claims. There were no title issues or criminal problems with the titles and no one has been defrauded. We are eager to address these cases in a court of law, on the record, where people will have to be responsible for their conduct. And I'm referring specifically to the Farmers Branch Police Department.
That's the information we have to date.
Special thanks to 67Mustangblog for following the story so closely. [All information via CBS-11 TV]
Comments
Farmers Branch Police are continuing their witch hunt.
Eleanor was a unicorn, not a witch.
In my (limited) experience, one of two things is happening / going on when people cry Witch hunt!:
A) The authorites in question have a prior history of either abusive or at the very least of using questionable methods;
or
B) There's a helluva lot of crap still to come out.
Either these guys have balls the size of watermelons or they're being railroaded by overzealous police. The evidence so far seems to point to the former, rather than the latter. I guess when they get to court, we'll see why their lawyers seem so indignant.
Bondo or some other brand of body filler is a part of almost all body work, whether the work is shoddy or outstanding. The other option is lead, which has its own set of strengths and weaknesses. Most body filler ends up on the shop floor. Maybe Mr. Hasty has a point regarding the tactics of Farmer's Branch Police Department if they're the ones that leveled this misleading Bondo accusation.
They were getting ripped off either way. $106,000! Wow.
The people buying these are the reason american muscle cars are so over-priced.
First, 13 gallons of Bondo is not 13 lbs. More like 117 lbs.
That newscast is about as slanted and hyperbolic as I've ever seen - pure local schlock. That bit on using inmate labor ("convicted of such crimes as aggravated assault, aggravated robbery and MURDER!") was over the top. It was a sponsored jail program that let inmates learn a skill - what's the big deal with that?
And the claim that they were "replicas" is, near as I can tell, has no basis in fact. Any restoration these days involves getting replacement and fabricated parts. These might not have been high quality restorations, but using the original frame certainly is a good start to a restoration by definition.
As for the filing of VIN numbers, there seems to be something shady going on but with all the other bs in these reports it's hard to separate fact from mudslinging.
@weatherman: Yeah, we fixed the 13 lbs to 13 gallons in the post. Calm your high pressure system there, weatherman.
Since the police confiscated all those Mustang bodies, and half made cars, does that mean that they're going to end up in a police auction, or will they be given to the people who already paid a deposit?
If they're going to a police auction, that sucks for the original buyers, but it seems like a cheap way to get some classic cars that need some work.
@MalFuller: Exactly what I was thinking. Every restoration I've ever been a part of has included the use of Bondo... hell those old cars came from the factory full of lead filler.
And the bit about the replacement parts coming from Taiwan? Did they honestly expect the rust to be fixed with pressings from FoMoCo? And honestly, does it even matter where the metal came from? The two allegations--13 lbs of Bondo and Taiwanese replacement parts--don't really jive. It's not like they're stuffing the rockers with old newspapers and using Bondo as a metal substitute. THAT would be a damning allegation on part with the VIN defacement.
If the prison officials don't watch what the inmates are doing any better than that, maybe there's a nice Texas correctional facility that will let me hire inmates to run my methamphetamine manufacturing operation. I'll be creating jobs, and teaching them valuable skills! Hell, maybe they'll give me a tax break and a government grant!
@weatherman: "As for the filing of VIN numbers, there seems to be something shady going on but with all the other bs in these reports it's hard to separate fact from mudslinging."
OK when is it acceptable or legal to remove the VIN numbers and change them?
PARTS FROM TAIWAIN!!!!!11111@ Oh noes!
If that reporter, Stephanie Lucero, ever bothers to see what goes into building a house - she will have kittens. It will make 13 lbs. of Bondo seem like minor flecks of chalk. You would be surprised what corners you can cut and cover up with sheetrock and wallpaper.
Did the buyers honestly believe that Unique had stumbled onto 200+ pristine, rare muscle cars that only required a quick detail before the next car show? Haven't they ever seen the TV show "American Hot Rod" and watched the Boyd Coddington creations come to life? I recall copious amounts of Bond being used on that show.
I think that if you're paying this much money for an old Mustang, you're a moron. No, wait, what I MEANT to say is that if you're paying this much for a custom musclecar, you ought to get stuff made from real metal instead of sculpted in Bondo. A skim coat of filler over the whole car (to get the surface smooth for painting--see here: [jalopnik.com] ) is completely different from using Bondo to make a two-inch-deep dent disappear without bothering to use a hammer and dolly. As for the Taiwanese parts, I don't think that's a big deal-- I'm pretty sure the OEM-style fenders, doors, quarterpanels, etc. from Year One, Goodmark and similar suppliers are from overseas stamping plants nowadays. But Jesus, thirteen gallons of Bondo? Did they leave the sheetmetal unaltered and build a "bodykit" over it like so many Civic drivers?
I think the one thing we can all agree on is that this makes everyone's Personal Project Car Hells seem a little more reasonable.
Wow- wait till all those Shelby continuation Cobra owners find out their cars were built in prison, too...
LOL 13 gallons of bondo X 200 cars= 2600 gallons of bondo, or about half the GDP of Honduras; Gee, the law never exaggerates, does it? What tipped them off- the 12 Duro semis parked in front of their garage?
That said, although washing titles is as unamerican as fixing college football games, half the resto-mods built have the same potential issues- plating a brand new car with a 1966 title is always going to be suspect somewhere.
My guess is that the usual suspect is at hand here, somewhere- money laundering. Don't expect Andy and Barney to be running this case for long.....
Schadenfreude! Will muscle cars ever be cool? Not when there are vintage British, Italian, and German sports cars to park next to them. Given the choice in 1966, any sane person would have taken the import. What changed? They are still better cars.
@goatrope: I guess it's just that maybe the buyers expected their $200k cars to be made of metal, not plaster of paris.
@Trotskyite: What changed, you ask? Well, the Baby Boomers got old and fat, for one, and getting into and out of a Mustang is a little easier than getting into and out of a TR3 or a Big Healey. Putting a more comfortable interior and a road-gripping suspension in a musclecar allows middle-aged car people to live out their adolescent fantasies without having to be physically fit.
@weatherman: Umm, in which altenate reality is removing VIN numbers "learning a skill"?
I'd be curious how many VIN numbers a convict must remove to be awarded "good-behavior", how many to be considered "rehabilitated"?
Nice to see the prison/industrial complex is working so well. (I'm sure further privatization will fix that right up.) I'm sorry, but this story may be ABOUT cars, but it goes WAAAY BEYOND cars. WOW, just wow.
Here are some aerial view's of Unique Performance from MSN's LiveSearch.
I count ~14 'stangs out back, and it looks like the Federales might already be at the front door, look out! [maps.live.com] (click on Bird's Eye, and N S W E)
Any guesses on the small, low, black car out back? (parked diagonally, as dicks do), ...mid-engine exotic? Ok, there's a suspect Nissan Armada, and what's this?... who's 18-wheeler with the Shelby-style racing stripes? Oh, ...Oops.
@Trotskyite: Really? Thanks for the tip! I guess I was wrong to prefer a mid-year big-block Corvette or a first-gen Camaro all these years.
For someone with your namesake, you've sure got some elitist attitudes about the conveyances of the rich.
caveat emptor - If anyone is stupid enough to pay that kind of money for a POS, then let them get scorched.
None of this surprises me. It takes a lot of body filler to restore a car, even when used properly. As someone else said, most of it ends up on the shop floor. And when you're smoothing out firewalls and doorjambs and such, you'll need more than the regular body job.
As for the Taiwan panels, that's just where they're made. Every panel for every restoration isn't availible with a Made in teh USA sticker on it.
The title thing IS illegal, but it happens way more than you think. I doubt any of those cars were stolen, and if the DMV won't title your old car, you work around the DMV.
@Armand4: As a middle-aged person who does not live out fantasies but had the pleasure of enjoying these cars when they were new and appreciating muscles cars still, allow me to address your extremely hasty generalization with: piss off.
Everything has changed in 40 years, including people's expectations about cars and their ride and safety.
$200K for an Eleanor replica? I'm sorry, but no amount of money will wash away the stench of Nicolas Cage from that car.
Besides, what were they expecting? It's a Mustang (a car who's main asset is that it's a cheap way to get a V8) with an ugly body kit (it was an interesting novelty in the movie, now it's just depressing that it's almost as beloved as the orignal GT500).
Title washing and VIN plate swapping is illegal but when you are remanufacturing 40 year old cars from rusting bodies there's definitely a gray area out there.
Look at CARS and their new 1957 Chevy convertible bodies and turnkey cars. The cars are made from all new components with the exception of an original '57 Chevy cowl so they can legally call the result a 1957 and title the car as a Chevy.
So it's illegal to pull a VIN plate off one car and rivet it to another. But it's perfectly legal to transplant the panel holding the VIN. What's the real difference?
Parts from Taiwan? Last time I checked, Taiwan is a fairly wealthy, first-world country with some of the highest quality steel mills in the world.
Now, mainland China might be a different story. Sourcing a few replacement parts from Taiwan for a restoration of a 40+ year old collectors car that will live 98% of its life either in a garage or on a trailer is one thing, but just imagine that reporter's reaction if she ever stumbles onto the fact that a large percentage of the parts content in new, off the lot cars is sourced from China these days.
She'd probably think it was the scandal of the century if she found out the GM LNJ V6 in the Equinox and Torrent was from - gasp!- China.
This reminded me of the Wikipedia entry on the Mini and to get around the restrictions of cars under 25 years old, importers will swap around the VIN plates of older cars and simply claim that they replaced every single part of the car:
[en.wikipedia.org]
@Novaload: I apologize for offending you. Perhaps I should have said that MANY Baby Boomers have gone soft in their old age. My best friend's father still drives the '69 Corvette he bought new, and I know a seventy-year-old who drives a De Tomaso Mangusta and vintage races a Can-Am car--and doesn't seem to have a problem getting into either one of them. Sadly, they don't cancel out all the old men buying automatic-transmission Miatas and driving 'Cuda prices into the stratosphere.
1rst : $200K for a non-original Shelby, a tarted up Mustang? What, you're kiddin', right?
2nd : $200K for a Bondo-Bucket? I know there's some fitting with the Foose Kit, but damn !
3rd : $106K of deposit? What, it's small change to them? You let a small cashdown, not the HALF of the car retail. If they say no, go somewhere else.
@weatherman: The fact is they promised something, got Carroll Shelby's name on it and never delivered. They also promised high quality and we've spoken with people that have the cars and have not gotten the promised quality. That's fraud in Texas.
@Armand4: No harm done. And I do agree with your first comment, that anyone who pays this much for a re-fabbed mustang is a moron. I'm sure there are Mustang-less morons who will take exception, and free market econonomists who say, "Whatever traffic will bear"--I too was extremely shocked by the'Cuda price at B-Jyear before this. I think these are not people with active fantasy lives; I think they are extremely rich people who get what they want and will pay a ridiculous price to get it, especially in front of an audience. The same way they'd buy an art piece because it's "famous."
It has always been better to work along with your local car customizer, old car clubs, and maybe pick up some tools as well.
What's the point of having a car that you never had a hand in building, other than the hand writing your signature?
How did they get Carroll Shelby to officially approve?
Maybe he's so old school, that he believes a person that says "You have my word on it", but I really hope that he at least saw enough of the cars, or said, "I'll put my signature on it when I see it".
Until everything gets to the courts, I'll be sitting on the fence on this one.
I have little faith in stories that get sensationalized. Leave that to Howrd Stern.
@skulldriveshaft: Carroll cares enough about his name to sue the pants off anyone that tries to use "Shilby", "Shellboy", or anything close to his name w/ out permission, but ask nicely and pay in cash, and he'll endorse the shit you took this morning.
RE: using prison labor
1. Takes one to know one.
2. Better Texas has them doing bondo on cars instead of executing retarded inmates.
@Matt Hardigree: I'm actually surprised there is a Fraud Law in Texas.
Look, the company I work for is based in Texas, and I dread going into the land of Bush twice a year. I already said no (actually, my words were no way in hell) if my boss offered me a promotion if I had to move to Texas.
PCH projects: farmers branch police edition...
well last I heard and this is from the TV show Rides, what Unique did to the cars was rebuild them from the ground up as a Shelby, they removed the VINs and got new ones for the cars from the local DMV as Shelby mustangs with Shelby's name on it. complete with his signature on the glove box. I will have to re-watch that episode as I no have it on DVD (first season of Rides that is) but that is what they were supposed to be doing.
13 gallons of bondo on a Mustang is news, now?
Did everybody in the state of Texas, er United Republic Of Texas go the the Redundancy School Of Redundancy?
It's a VIN, as in a Vehicle Identification Number, not a VIN Number, which would be a Vehicle Identification Number Number.
Moving on... I guess I'm not to sure how sorry I feel for the schmucks who had their work done here. These are big dollar luxury or toy items, they should have done more research before they sent a check for 100k to some stranger on the internet to rebuild their youth with a drum of Bondo.
I want to know who's going to build Eleanor replicas from the H.B. Halicki classic.....
@grzydj: I think the schmucks assumed that for their $200K they'd get FoMoCo sheetmetal and professional (non gobs-of-bondo) fitment. I used to work for one of the largest importers of Taiwanese reproduction body panels in the US, and I can tell you that while Taiwan is indeed a First-World industrial nation, they make lousy counterfeit body panels. To make them look right requires either many hours of hand reshaping, or gobs of bondo. Insurance work got the latter. Cash customers got the former or genuine factory replacement panels. For this kind of money repop and bondo is inexcusable. As for the VIN thing, the reissuing of VINs to make a 6 cylinder Mustang into a Shelby might be a bit shady even if the customer knows about it, but it's probably illegal, if the original VIN is not well accounted for in the paperwork. I'm not sure but I suspect that if all traces of the original VIN are removed from the vehicle, laws have probably been broken.