Also at issue is how much you can change or replace on a car and it still be "the car". Follow this fictional scenario and chime in when the guy no longer has "the car".

You find a one-owner hemi cuda 4-speed behind a barn in the midwest. The original owner tells the story.

He bought the car new, but blew the tranny a month after he got it. The dealer replaced the tranny, so it isn't original. A few years later he blew the second tranny, and disgusted, he parked it behind the barn and figured he'd deal with it later.

That was thirty years ago. Somewhere along the line he sold the Dana 60 to the neighbor kid who busted the axle in his Dodge pickup trying to pull his buddy's Chevy out of the creek. Since then the car has been sitting on its frame rails in the mud and manure, so the car is a rusty mess.

Undaunted, you realize the value and purchase it and tow it home, title (with intact fender tag) in hand. You replace the frame rails and floor. You patch the quarters, and put fenders and doors from a donor car. You replace the rear deck and trunk gutter. The cowl is shot- a donor car supplies that also. Mice have eaten the build sheet and just about every non-metallic item Plymouth put on the car.

First dilemma: Do you save the number on the old cowl, patch it in, or no?

You are almost done with the resto. You send the dash pad into Dashes-R-Us. They remove and lose the VIN tag. Dang.

Finally you are done. You have title, fender tag, core support #, and hemi block all original.

You are driving home from a mopar show late one night and fall asleep. You have a head-on with a bus full of nuns. Their bus goes over the ravine and they are all killed. Your front end is totally destroyed, the block is cracked beyond repair.

You torch off all the ruined metal with the intent of rebuilding it. But you discover your wife has been sleeping with the UPS man, and you get a divorce. Her lawyer beats up your lawyer, so you lose. Discouraged, you put the remains (the back half) of the car on ebay and get a thousand bucks for it.

The winning ebay bidder puts the front end of his 70 cuda (he passed out while drunk on the railroad tracks, and an Amtrak Luxuryliner totally erased the back half of his 318 car)on the back end of your hemi car.

And the winner is.....The UPS man?