It's a question of history?

Opinion???
A couple of things of interest to clarify & 2 questions here
Talking to a couple of people last night & one mentioned about a sports car that had recently been purchased. Under the sports car chassis are the remains of an open wheeler. Talk was based around removing the open wheeler part of the chassis to restore it to is former glory as its history started in the early 60’s. In addition to this, it was discussed about restoring the sports car chassis to it former glory also as it’s history started in the early 70’s.
You can see differing sides of the argument but at what point does one car start & another finish? Or do they?
In addition to this if a chassis is crashed & written off. This chassis is replaced with a new one & the crash one is ditched. Many years later someone rebuilds the crashed chassis from those remains & hence you have two cars the same.
So what is more important?
A continuous, uninterrupted line of direct traceable history?
Or
A splitting of history & both are in fact quite eligible?
The same questions are relevant for both scenarios above

An example of a cars history is in the Vintage Racecar mag For Sale adds several months ago when an ex Moss FJ was for sale for 150k US & it stated that the body & chassis weren’t the originals. This would be a point for the continuous line of history then?

DSJ once put this scenario in an article in Motor Sport...

He told of a Bugatti owner who was refurbishing his car. As he did so, most of the bits got replaced and he gave the old 'useless' bits to someone else.

Later a car got built out of the 'useless' bits and so there were two cars. I'm sure it happens!

There's a Lotus 15 in Australia with two titles. The original chassis was replaced after a crash and the original put aside... the original was a factory lightweight version while the replacement wasn't. Which would be the most representative version of the original car?

Would there not be a 'chassis number' on one of the cars, making that one the 'original' car.

But this discussion also open for the one about, when is so much of a car replaced that it is not longer a re-built, but rather a new-built?

Which car is is we are talking about?

I know the car - it's a home-built rear engine racing car, raced by a single owner (the builder) throughout its very long racing career. It never had a chassis number. When it was no longer eligible for single seater racing because its category became defunct, the builder modified it into a sports car, and raced on!

I'm not sure when it finished racing - sometime in the late 80s or early 90s - but it was built in the early to mid 1960s. A long career. When the owner-builder-driver finally retired and sold the car, the new owner pulled out all the really good bits and junked the rest.

It's a lovely conundrum. Restore to original version 1 1960s? To a later period when it had an Alfa engine? To the sports car configuration? There is no doubt about its continuous history: one owner from new, sir, and only driven Sundays (and practice on Saturdays!)

Thanks.

Guess it makes sense, and indeed also a conundrum.

Would it be possible today, to build a car without an official chassis number and race it?

I am asking since I raced (well drove) Go-Karts in the late 70'ies in Denmark, and even in the low junior classes where I mostly made up the rear, the karts had a unique number stamped into the frame.

A similar question applies to the Terraplane owned by Peter Hitchin...

He owns the body built for the car in 1936/7, a chassis (the original has long gone), the mechanicals (most or all of which are replacements), a replacement body as fitted in 1948/9, not original, but with a frame bent up by the same body builder and bent over the same drum in the seventies. The car raced in at least four different forms, probably five, and Peter could restore it to any one of them.

With a couple of extra chassis and sets of mechanicals, he could build four or five cars, one for each era. I reckon he should do a couple but he thinks no two should exist side by side.

Thanks.

Would it be possible today, to build a car without an official chassis number and race it?

See bottom narrative, post 42, here;
http://forums.autosp...p;#entry3936483

Roger Lund