Trying to track down an original owner

[Joe G]

I am desperately trying to track down the previous and original owner of a car. I have no leads aside from the VIN# and title number from when the car was registered. Does anyone have any advice or insights on how to go about this?

Thanks,
Joe

[NardusDC]

I tried to do this with my e30 - only got 3 owners back, but you may have more luck. Here was what I did that worked and kind of worked:

1. Talk to whomever you bought the car from. I still had the contact for the immediate prior owner and they had the name and city of the person from whom they bought the car. I used Google to track that person down and talked to them by phone (yes, they were weirded out). I asked for the name of the prior seller and got an "I think it was [_]." That lead didn't work.

2. Look at the service records (if you have any). One of the receipts had the name and address of one of the prior owners. Unfortunately, the person had a common name (think John Smith) and I couldn't track him down via Google.

3. Pull a Carfax report and call BMW of North America. BMW will give you the in-service date and selling dealership of the car. Carfax sometimes gives you service dates for the car. You can call the selling dealership and servicing mechanics and see if any of them can help you. This was a brick wall for me as none of them were willing to give me the personal information of their customers (understandably), but you may have better luck. The best I was able to get was a mechanic in California to confirm that he had in fact replaced the timing belt, confirming the mileage and date, which gave me some peace of mind. He also told me a bit about other maintenance that I didn't know had been done to my car.

Best of luck. I'm interested to learn how your hunt goes.

[dnguyen1963]

Why? No one is giving out personal information.

[RedReplicant]

Title issues?

[Joe G]

No title issues. Car is a two owner car with some unique history, I'm trying to get all the service records I can just so I have them.

Story is that the gentleman who purchased the car new (now in his 90s) gave it to an acquaintance last year to sell it for him on the condition that all of the money went to charity. The man who took the donation had the timing belt/water pump done and then sold it to the current owner who I am going to potentially be buying the car from. The current owner seems to have lost the contact info from when he purchased the car so I am playing detective.

Oh and the car in question is a very mint '84 Porsche 944.

[NardusDC]

Doesn't the current title have the name of the previous owner?

[TimeMachinE30]

Carfax it. See if it can get you in the area of where it was serviced and likely located.

LE type tools usually don't give history of ownership. Your local MVA/DMV may have a history.