The closest thing to a "soul" for a car is the Title which of course includes the vin #. There have been cars (not Deloreans) that have been built out of little more them a legal title and a motor. If you were to ever lose the title through salvage or theft now indeed you have a "parts car" because it can never be legaly registered so it is legaly just a collection of parts that happens to look like a car. This is the reason that there are 83's, the vin #'s and certifacates of origion where created by DMC before the cars where built so they where able to assemble the last group with the already asigned vin's. David Teitelbaum vin 10757 --- In dmcnews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Peter Lucas <lucas@xxxx> wrote: > This whole "parts car" issue is simple: > > Let's just declare the "soul" of a D to be the left front fender (the > weakest link in the restoration chain, no?). Then, if you are trying to > decide whether a particular car is worth restoring, you just have to > decide whether you can either (a) salvage the fender or (b) somehow > come up with another one. This makes the total number of "parts cars" > more-or-less well-defined: It is the total number of cars minus the > total number of left front fenders. :-) > > > --Pete Lucas > VIN #06703