I was looking at buying a 75 Ford Gran Torino that a guy had bought without a title in South Carolina and brought with him to FL. He told me there would be no problem getting a title by using one of those titling services that do all the work, and it would only cost me about $100. Sounds great right?
I went to my local DMV office, and talked to the manager there, and here's what she told me. In order to get a title, I, or a title company, would need to contact South Carolina and obtain the name and address of the last known titled owner, and that's assuming the car was ever titled in South Carolina. Then they would need to contact the owner and document the car had in fact been sold. If the owner had passed away, they would need to contact the next of kin. All of this can be done, and is often done, but here's the risk: a title not only proves ownership, but also proves a car was sold. Without a signed title, there is no legally documentable proof that a car was ever sold, so if an owner, or owner's family member, wants to say "I/we never sold that car to anyone", they can. And if they did, I would be subject to having to surrender the vehicle and losing my money unless I could sue the person I bought it from to get it back.
This is a huge risk to collector car purchasers, especially the way this market works. Let's say you buy a collectable car that needs a title, that was owned by Joe Owner for decades and sold before he passed away. The title company does their thing, locates an heir, and says "hey, your Dad sold this car to Billy Buyer in Florida and he can't get the car retitled until you sign this form saying the car was sold, so if you could sign that and return it that would be great". There's nothing that compels that heir to sign anything, and worse... the heir might be a regular BJA watcher who says "hey, I saw one of those cars sold for $100,000 last week. I want it back" and say they never knew their pops sold he car and they want it back, and since there's no signed title, but merely a third party bill of sale, they have legal standing. And this risk isn't limited to heirs as unscrupulous sellers can do the same thing. As the DMV manager told me, proving ownership is a hassle, but proving the car was ever sold is a serious risk, especially when you're talking about collector cars.
My general rule is never buy a car without a title. If a new title was as easy to get as every seller claims it to be, they would have likely gotten one themselves. Unless the car is an obvious parts or racing car that no one would bother getting a title for, my assumption needs to be the owner tried to get a title and couldn't, and is now trying to offload their problem on me.
