Untaken advice

My buddy bought a $500 car about 5 years ago. Honestly it was a creampuff of an 88 New Yorker Landau, if that can actually be said of such a miserable excuse for a rolling sofa. A 40k mile grandma passed away special. Over the course of 5 years he turned it into a rolling ashtray, never washed it but kept up on the maintenance. If the windows were down you could smell it from 20 paces and the moss growing on it had reached "comical" levels. When he finally bought a Ranger we had a talk over happy hour about the Chrysler.

I put it bluntly. "Whatever you do, go to the DMV the day you sell it and take it out of your name"

"Why? Isn't that the new owners job?"

I explained that a car like that would be purchased by someone who would never register it, it would be driven until the tags expired and abandoned.

The car sold via craigslist for $500. He was happy that he got his money back.

Over the course of the next few weeks I would periodically ask him if he did the DMV thing.

Yesterday he texts me that my warnings were accurate and unheeded, he was contacted by a towing company and the impound fees were already at $2500.

The car changed hands twice since the person he sold it to.

Any tips on getting the tow company off his back?

On CA titles there is a release of liability portion that detaches for the old owner to submit to the DMV to prove they sold it. It has the purchaser's personal info along with the seller's. I ALWAYS make a copy and drop it off personally at the DMV. When I get the parking ticket/red light ticket/impound notification I simply send in the copy of the Release.

Your buddy needs to find the paperwork he filled out when he sold it.

Jumper K. Balls wrote: I explained that a car like that would be purchased by someone who would never register it, it would be driven until the tags expired and abandoned.

I would never leave my tags on a car that I sold. Tags are in MY name, they stay with me

Every state is different. In Nevada, the seller keeps the license plates and is supposed to turn them in to the DMV.

In Oregon the norm is that the plates stay with the car. You can make other arrangements, but that's the default.

I wonder whether it'd do any good to submit the online version of the form (and whether he has any of the buyer's info...)

Guy I bought my Answer from had Oregon military veteran plates on it. Drove it home, mailed him the plates. It does vary by state.

Hopefully he kept his copy of the documentation that he sold it.

$2500 in impound fees on a $500 car, LOL. Friend of mine when I was in the Navy got his car towed in Long Beach. He just let them keep it because it was not worth anything.

My first car was my mother's old '87 Taurus wagon, which she gave me when I was in college after she got a new car. I drove it for the last year or so of college, graduated, got a real job with a real paycheck, and after another year or so went out to buy a car that I was more interested in (a '95 Probe GT). I traded the Taurus in on it, with something like 140K miles. At the time I lived in San Diego, and wholesale cars in southern California were often taken to Mexico to be sold there.

A couple years later I got a letter in the mail from the customs/Border Patrol people, informing me that they had seized an '87 Taurus station wagon at the border for violation of such and such section of the US code, that it was due to be sold at auction, and that I was the last registered owner of it. Fortunately I had kept the paperwork from when I traded it in, including my release of liability, so I did not hesitate to send them a copy of it. :)

EvanR wrote: Every state is different. In Nevada, the seller keeps the license plates and is supposed to turn them in to the DMV.

Same in SC

Jumper K. Balls wrote: Any tips on getting the tow company off his back?

Eventually they will sell the car at auction to recoup the fees (at least some of them). If he has parking tickets associated with the tow, he may be on the hook for those.

This car:

ended up in a impound lot two owners after me and it was traced back to the fellow I sold it to saying he owed some crazy amount of money and would he please come get it. It was part of a drug bust in California and he is in Pittsburg IIRC.

Toebra wrote: $2500 in impound fees on a $500 car, LOL. Friend of mine when I was in the Navy got his car towed in Long Beach. He just let them keep it because it was not worth anything.

Yep, this. Just have him tell the tow company to dispose of it. Theoretically, they could try to pursue costs, but they'd spend far more money doing that then they're recoup and they know it. So tell the tow yard that it was long ago sold, but title not transferred and they can do what they want with it.

always keep a copy of the bill of sale. I suspect if he has one and tells the tow company he has proof he sold the car they won't be willing to lawyer up to press the matter.

If he doesn't have that....looks like he may own a $3000 totaled ashtray.

I still remember when I was 8 or 9 my dad got a call in the middle of the night that his car had been used as a getaway in a robbery and left abandoned in the middle of the road somewhere in the Carolinas. He had sold the car a month earlier but the buyer had never changed the paperwork. Is was a Dodge Polara with a police package 440 and aftermarket drag race heads. They abandoned it after outrunning the cops. My dad told them "yeah, that thing's fast, but it hasn't been my car for about a month." Of course, he had the paperwork to prove it.

I had the same thing happen, but on a $3500 car. I worked 1st shift and the buyer worked 2nd, so all of my dealings were with the buyers brother. I filled out my portion ofvthe back of the title and got it notarized, and gave that to the brother when he gave me the cash. I got a call a few months later from an acquaintance at the tow company. "If you want your car back pay us $200 for tow costs. Girl got pulled over for fictitious tags. Its still technically yours, so if you want it come get it." I wasnt going to do anything that shady, but i told him not to let her have it until she had the paperwork done. She also called me threatening to sue because the rear main started leaking a month after she bought it.

Tags can stay with the car in Texas. I found this out when I bought the Civic. The tags didn't match the tag number on the title and I thought I was going to run into complications transferring it into my name. No issues and the DMV asked if I wanted to keep the plates that were on it or get new ones. I got new ones but should have kept the old ones as they were classic tags.

Michigan's system (as of the last time I sold anything) isn't great, and the only way you can be semi-sure the title paperwork is transferred properly is to force the the buyer to go with you to the SoS so you can stand there with them and watch them turn in the title and pay their tax. Plates don't go with the car though, so that mitigates some of the risk.

If your vehicle is registered in Maryland, TAKE THE TAGS WITH YOU WHEN YOU SELL IT.

Also, don't cancel the insurance until the day after you physically return the tags to the MVA.

Maryland takes insuring a vehicle very seriously (as they should).

I had to pay a parking ticket that an shiny happy person got on a car I sold him. That was the last time I let someone take my plates unless I know them. It wasn't a $2500 ticket, it was only around $60, but it still stung. I had to report the plates stolen to keep any future tickets from being my responsibility.

Thanks to this thread I did some research and found that there is an Ohio process for cancelling your registration. I'll do that in the future. I do make sure to get a signed bill of sale now.

Yep in Oregon the plates transfer with the car. If you want to keep them for some reason like they are personalized plates there is some paperwork involved.

He told the tow company the car was no longer his, they threatened collections and "other legal action ". All tow companies are bastards anyway.

He has managed to find the first buyer and made up new paperwork with the original date of sale. He should be in the clear.

It is painless to have the registration removed from your name here. When I was going through lots of cars I would periodically check what was in my name at the DMV. One time I had 20 cars registered to me, only three of which I currently owned. I just told them which ones to remove and they did.

Which reminds me, I haven't checked in a few years and should do so next time I am in there.

It happened to me once where a buyer didn't transfer the title and then they racked up tickets. However, in Minnesota there's a part at the bottom of the title you have the buyer sign and then you tear it off and keep it as proof of sale. I showed that to the police; I was off the hook, plus then they had the contact information for the buyer so they could run them down.

I believe nowadays we can go to the state DMV website to let them know a car has been sold, so it's even easier.

WilD wrote: Michigan's system (as of the last time I sold anything) isn't great, and the only way you can be semi-sure the title paperwork is transferred properly is to force the the buyer to go with you to the SoS so you can stand there with them and watch them turn in the title and pay their tax. Plates don't go with the car though, so that mitigates some of the risk.

That's why they made it the law a few years ago that the seller must make and retain a record of the sale or copy of the completed title.

http://www.michigan.gov/sos/0,4670,7-127--191751--,00.html

mad_machine wrote:

Jumper K. Balls wrote: I explained that a car like that would be purchased by someone who would never register it, it would be driven until the tags expired and abandoned.

I would never leave my tags on a car that I sold. Tags are in MY name, they stay with me

In Delaware it can go either way. Tags can go with the car or be bought, sold, or held independently of the car. But in the $500 car range, current registration / tags are worth at least an extra $100-$200 in selling price, and that doesn't happen unless you leave the tags on the car.

I once got a random non compliance suspension for having plates in my name that werent insured. Sold the car to a guy who was going to derby it and forgot. 90 day suspension and 2 years of an sr-22 bond taught me to remove and turn in plates and always get the title notarized.

Definitely varies by state. In PA, the plate is yours and if you sell a car, you take it off and keep it. If circumstances allow, it's a fairly simple matter to go to a local tag store and transfer the registration. The new owner gets a new plate, installs it and drives home. When I sold my first Spitfire, it happened late after the stores were closed so I let him drive the car home and mail me the plate (he did). When I bought my latest car from CT, the seller let me drive the car home and mail him the plates, but we've known each other for over a decade. He mostly wanted them back because they are personalized tags and his wife wanted them for her car.

NY is tags get removed and either transferred to a new vehicle or returned. I've also never a car.