Quote: Without the original build sheet many options on a car cannot be documented. You cannot know exactly what the car came from the factory with. Simple as that. Now continue the
I agree with that...mostly. As several others noted, the Monroney label also provides the documentation as to what originally was on the car. My Challenger T/A had 2 broadcast sheets from another car, and its original fender tag. When I bought the car in the late '70's, it was largely original, however it had Cragar mags and the engine had been rebuilt and modified. I replaced the wheels with factory rallye wheels a few years after I bought the car and all was well with the world, my car was now in its "as built" state, or so I thought. Nearly 20 years later my car's dealer sales packet turned up (it's a Mr. Norms sold car). Though the Monroney label wasn't in the packet, there was a sheet called an "advance dealer shipping notice" I think it is called, in the envelope which listed all my car's options. From that I found that my car wasn't optioned with ralleys, so I had to go track down some 15x7 "450's" for my car to make it correct. Had I had that information years earlier when I bought my rallyes, I could have saved quite a bit of money as 450's weren't bringing much money in the early 80's! It's great if we could all start with original unaltered cars like Dave suggested, but few cars like that exist, and most of us don't have the network to find one of the few that exist, or the piggy bank to buy such a car if one turns up. Therefore, to do an accurate restoration, or to document a car, some sort of factory paperwork on the car is needed. The Monroney label is great, but if that no longer exists, the advance dealer shipping notice or broadcast sheet is needed as the car's "pedigree". I would think any of those documents is equally valuable, having one is good and adds value to the car, having more than one of those documents is nice but doesn't add value. And having none of those 3 has to hurt the value. As for the statement that repro paperwork is no different than repro parts, I don't agree or understand that thinking at all!
