need help/info on california titles, lost, last registered years ago Options

[rhodyguy]

i have a line on a car way cheap. the owner can't find the ca title, he now lives in wa. last registered in 88' and never changed over to wa. in wa if 2 people are on a title, or want to be on the title, both parties must be present to change it over. he says he can't find the title and that ca no longer has records of the car. after a period of time does ca drop the info from the dmv records?

kevin

[lapuwali]

The light and brake test is only for salvage cars. To replace a title they have no record for, they DO require a physical inspection, but it's of the VIN plate, so they can match it to the VIN you put on the form. For old VINs (dunno what the cutoff is, but it may be when the current VIN came into being, sometime after 1980), a CHP officer has to inspect the VIN plate, as for some reason it's the CHP that issues "new" VINs. Hence, this is why the actual inspection. Not so silly, really.

Your two choices are to simply find out what WA will do with only a bill of sale between you and the seller, or to go to one of the private titling agencies (Google for them), which will create a new title in their name through some legal loophole involving a title-less state (New Hampshire seems to be a favorite), then "sell" you the car with said title for a nominal fee. This isn't as shady as it sounds. Their target market is for old barn-find cars and bikes with lost-lost paperwork. A friend in Colorado self-imported a pre-war BMW bike, and had to go through one of these agencies to get a title, as all he had was a recent German bill of sale.