Howdy! This is Matt from The Autopian. I talked to David about this and we'll have it for you soon. We've been doing the math and it's kinda hilarious. Obviously, we were proving a point with this video but it's not... the most efficient way to do this.
Another big point of curiosity for me is registration--it clearly doesn't have a CA number plate, but there was a big red "3" on a laminated card in the spare.. what is that?
How do you go about titling and registering a brand new body + frame?
> it clearly doesn't have a CA number plate, but there was a big red "3" on a laminated card in the spare.. what is that?
That's a temporary operating permit, colloquially called a moving permit. I've not built a car, so I dunno what happens there... but I've gotten moving permits for cars that have expired registration and need an emissions test to get registered. Can't have wheels on the public road unless it's registered or you have a movimg permit.
Afaik, all of our states have a process to get a VIN for a car without one... although it's common to take a VIN from a similar donor vehicle because it's less effort and vehicle safety and emissions requirements are de facto tied to the model year on the title. Legally, they're tied to the year of manufacture --- emissions ties to the year of the engine, not sure about safety.
You see all sorts of shenanigans if you look though. VW ended sales of Beetles in the US by the early 80s but still manufactured and sold them in Mexico through the 90s... it was not uncommon to send your US titled beetle to Mexico for "repair" and get back something very different. Sometimes just an engine transplant, sometimes only some key component from the US vehicle like the frame or the floor pan would remain, sometimes just the VIN plate. Putting a newer engine legally triggers newer emissions standards, but if you don't tell anybody and nobody notices, you can get away with it for a long time.
That was also a fun story! I had to do the insurance for it and CA is actually surprisingly a great state for this kind of stuff.
California has a tradition of being car-friendly. Probably not the first time someone did something like this, and they might have some idea of how to handle it by now.
We'll try to get the price up today or tomorrow and the registration story up next week.
Amazing! Can't wait :)
Not OP, but since I looked up the corresponding UK process: https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-approval/individual-vehicle-appro...
You end up with a special "Q" (as in James Bond?) number plate. There's a whole bunch of different processes depending on how Car of Theseus the vehicle is. Apparently this has recently been streamlined for rebuilds of classics from original parts (which is _not_ what the Jeep is). The system is still intended to prevent the re-use of crashed or otherwise written off frames, though.
Typically in the US you get a donor firewall from a registerable vehicle that has the VIN plate. This is pretty common for things like civilian jeeps, chevrolet C10 pickups and a few other American cars/trucks that have complete bodies you can buy in the aftermarket.
For military equipment you usually need the original frame (or part of it with stamps) because it has serial numbers stamped on it for the DMV to go by when registering.
Yeah it sounds like they had a rusted out donor vehicle, so they may have been able to get the necessary numbers from it. Will be interesting to read all the details of how they went about it.