This has been brewing in my head for a while...

Do any of the regional Mini clubs offer a certification service where they will issue a document certifying the authenticity of a car?

It struck me that there's always tons of discussion around whether this or that car is a genuine Cooper 'S' / GT / Sunshine / etc.. and it would be a valuable (read: revenue-raising!) service if a club was to offer an inspection service and issue a certificate of authenticity.

Clubs could publicise the members of their inspection committee, which would ostensibly give buyers confidence in a car's authenticity. Done properly, such a scheme could be plenty secure too, preventing scumbags from forging certificates.

Has this been done before?

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Simon

The adventures of an owner builder in the Tallarook Ranges

You would be opening a huge can of worms. Similar things have been tried in Gt Britain but most of them fail in the end.
There is a case over there at the moment where a historic vehicle club sacked the inspection experts and hired new experts because the old experts were knocking back too many (fake) cars and upsetting the members.

I could just imagine how it would blow up over here, a bloke with the $30.000 fake Cooper S may not like his car being labelled a fake and could take action against the club. Even though the car is a fake he may win in court.

The MOCQ used to offer this service I believe, they may still do it.

Mark Paget I remember used to be available for the job.

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SooperDooperMiniCooperExpertEngineering

All garage work involves equal measures of enthusiasm, ingenuity and a fair degree of irresponsibility.

The MOCQ do not offer this service, but there is nothing wrong with in the know members doing this sort of thing, on a non official basis of course.

The only thing the MOCQ offer is a dating service purely for the use of the owner in gaining concessional registration through Qld Transport. This dating certificate should never be used by a seller nor relied upon by a buyer to prove authenticity.

Steve

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1964 998cc Cooper
1971 Mini K x 2
1972 Clubman GT

I have seen a number of 1071's in the UK with certificates as you have described however two of them were rebodied after the certificate was issued. So you would need to get a certificate at the time of sale.

I have also seen a self-confessed replica that is a perfect copy (I promise you that you could not pick it, it just belongs to an honest owner!). There would be nothing stopping a certificate being issued as genuine, and then someone getting sued if it came out that it was a replica - so it could benefit the dark side too.

I think it is a case of buyer beware, do your homework, seek advice and ask about the history and previous owners.

I think it would be easy to manipulate the system You could get a genuine car and get it certified then you build a fake, stamp the original cars numbers onto it and sell the fake claiming it must be real coz you have the certificate. Then you use the original car again by sourcing some numbers (some times plates are openly sold on auction sights/ classifieds) restamping them onto the original and getting the car certified again and so on The issue of a certificate just makes it easier to dupe the buyer than it is now

Ageed!

It kinda of does not help reducing the stamping issues when you can buy blank body plates on the net (even if they are incorrectly printed)! There are also a couple of people around with the reverse stamping machines in the correct font who will stamp whatever you want on them. I have seen this on an MG when the owner wanted to change the body colour on the car and wanted the plate to match the new colour.

All those people with GT Falcon's etc....face the same problem we do! I love the old saying: "With only 7,500 Cooper 'S's built, it is great to see 10,500 still on the road!".

A few minutes in photoshop and anyone can have their very own certificate of authenticity.

Certified by the whatsmacallit mini society of wherever.

It wouldn't be that easy to fake.. the security is pretty easy actually. Each cert is serialised, and the club holds the authoritative record of what car has been issued which cert. The cert specifically says "Contact Foo Bar at Flat Rock Mini Club to verify this certificate", and all is well. It's up to the buyer as to whether or not they trust the opinion of that particular club.

I can appreciate the legal side.. that's something that the club would have to take into account. My take is that such a certification would be solely an opinion issued by a committee of people with enough of a reputation in the scene to generate trust in a buyer, rather than the buyer having to trust his/her own experience or the word of the seller. I don't see how that can result in legal exposure for the club at all.

For example, if I was buying a car purporting to be a Police Cooper 'S' and it came with a certificate from the VMCI with Doug (winabbey)'s signature on it, the car would immediately be more valuable to me than one which didn't. Likewise Watto.

Just a thought..

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Simon

The adventures of an owner builder in the Tallarook Ranges

Good idea in theory Simon, but the integrity of such a system would be called into question if just a few fakes were discovered after being blessed with authenticity upon being issued with such certificates.

I bet there's some very good phoney Coopers out there that would fool any expert.

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1967 Cooper S - new front bearings to do.
1965 Cooper S shell - Slow progress. No time or money!
1966 Deluxe- next rustoration!
Mk 2 & XJ6 Jags. Less said the better.

I don't doubt it, but if they're good enough to fool everyone, then they're effectively genuine

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Simon

The adventures of an owner builder in the Tallarook Ranges

Looking at it from another angle, I guess life would be boring without fakes.
Just consider the forgeries that are rife in the world of art - aboriginal dot paintings?

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1967 Cooper S - new front bearings to do.
1965 Cooper S shell - Slow progress. No time or money!
1966 Deluxe- next rustoration!
Mk 2 & XJ6 Jags. Less said the better.

The only way that something like this could work would be if the person/group/club issuing the certificate had access to the original BMC records so that they could confirm that any given body number left the production line as a particular model.

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