Bill,
Our partnership to purchase/restore/sell antique cars purchased three Speedsters in 2004 from Kirk at Vintage Speedtsers. They are all top of the line, beautiful cars, and we have the original MCO's and invoices from Vintage, which we are happy to provide to any interested party. We started the partnership with the goal of selling one or two Speedtsers (plus other genuine antiques and other replica cars) per year. After negotiating with insurance companies for six months, the best we could do on a dealorship policy was an anual premium of $10,000. Since this was more of a hobby than a business with us, we decided not to go forward with any more purchases and to sell at least one of the speedsters.
I registered the Ivory Speedster in my name and paid the sales tax on it. It is licensed in Arkansas as a 1961 Volkswagen Porsche Replica. It was the first one registered in Pulaski County, Arkansas, as I had quite a time educating them as to what they were registering. We even took the vehicle to the police station for an inspection and photos. This Speedster is driven to and back from work on a regular basis, and I love taking it out for errands on the weekend. It is thoroughly a joy to drive.
One of the partners wanted to register the Red Speedster in his name and begin driving it, but he just never took the time to get pictures off to Hagerty for insurance and to do the paperwork. And we didn't want to incur over $1,000 in sales tax and then sell the car a few months later. Long story short, two of the cars have set in our company warehouse for a couple of years, though we do start them up and drive them up and down the road to keep them lubricated and charged up. One of the partners wants to liquidate his interest in the partnership now, so we've decided to get serious about selling one of them.
Your advice to fellow forum members is good, Bill. Beware of deals that sound too good to be true, or cars with problems with the paperwork, etc. But that is not the case here. Call Kirk Duncan at Vintage. He'll tell you how we negotiated for a better deal by buying three at a time, and how we were like kids in a candy store waiting for them to be built. He drove them to the Auto Transport Depot in Los Angeles where they were put in an enclosed transport carrier as we didn't want them exposed to the elements during shipment to Little Rock.
We are extremely busy in our software developement company. Our clients keep us going 24/7 to keep up with their demands. I've owned the company since its inception in 1982, twenty-four years ago (about the time PC's were invented). We're not a fly by night outfit, just a few guys who love antique, classic cars, but found ourselves too busy to do justice to buying and selling them. I'm happy to answer any questions anyone has. Please email me.
Bill Dodgen