Lassie Come Home! No, Not You F-150

Years ago I sold my Mustang to a friend. She drove the car for awhile then sold it to someone else. Apparently that someone else never bothered to re-register the car but rather decided to drive the hell out of it and then abandon it. One morning my friend awoke to find her old Mustang, in complete shambles, sitting on her front lawn.

Today's Wall Street Journal tells a similar tale of a family selling an F-150 to a friend of a friend and then ten years later getting a registered letter in the mail telling them they owed $11,129 for a 17-year-old pickup that had been impounded.

It turns out that the friend had sold the pickup to someone else who had never registered the truck. Fortunately the author had kept a paper trail proving that the car had indeed been sold years ago.

The lesson? Get a bill of sale together showing mileage down to the tenth (just in case the new owner crashes around the corner). Be sure to send in any release of liability to the DMV or taxing authority. I usually write down the new buyer's complete info on the bill of sale to prevent any misunderstandings. I also like to have a witness around to listen to the transaction and sign the bill of sale as well. This has come in handy when the new buyer has gone out and collected parking tickets in San Francisco and then the bill arrives at my house.

I found the "Frank's Towing" site during a search for images for this story. It's a pretty funny spoof site created by some people tired of predatory towing. You can check it out here. If you are a subscriber to the Journal, you can check out the story here.