[GTO]

If you love long-form articles, this incredible story is for you .

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Joe is a detective for hire who specializes in recovering stolen cars. But not your car. Joe doesn’t look for cars stolen from parking garages or shopping malls—everyday transportation whose value lies in the number of miles they carry us. Joe Ford specializes in recovering cars whose value lies in not being driven much at all: rare, collectible, fetishized cars that are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes millions or tens of millions of dollars, prized not for their ability to get from here to there but rather for their beauty, the artistry of their design, the care with which they were built, and perhaps most of all, their provenance.

“I’m in a niche of a niche of a niche,” he says.

The rare-car market is like a pyramid.

The base layer is mostly American cars of the fifties—Bel Airs and Packards in garages across the U. S. that can sell for up to $125,000. Next come the muscle cars and rarer European cars—Mustangs, Mercedes, Jaguars. They can go for up to $350,000. At the top are the European racers and one-of-a-kind creations whose blend of history and craftsmanship can put their value in the millions: a Ferrari raced at Le Mans, perhaps, or a ’68 Mustang driven by Steve McQueen. A 1927 Bugatti Royale, one of six ever made, a twenty-one-foot-long, seven-thousand-pound commercial failure upon its debut, would be worth an estimated $100 million should one ever become available. In 2017, classic cars topped the Coutts Passion Index, a list of the British bank’s top passion investments, increasing in value by more than 300 percent in the past decade to bypass assets like wine, jewelry, and artwork.

Like jewelry and artwork, valuable cars are stolen. Thieves have pulled off elaborate heists of million-dollar vehicles, sometimes smuggling them to international locales, retrofitting them with fake paperwork, and then reselling them on the global market.

That’s when people call Joe.

[DaptChatterjee]

Wow! This looks straight out of a John Grisham novel!

[Manoj2268]

Read the complete article. Can be a good script for an action movie.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by DaptChatterjee

Wow! This looks straight out of a John Grisham novel!

Originally Posted by Manoj2268

Read the complete article. Can be a good script for an action movie.

I was thinking the exact same thing. I just finished reading a Clive novel. And part of the plot is also a classic cars that gets stolen and keeps re-appearing.

Fascinating guy. Would make a better TV series than the one about those guys repossessing airplanes. That sounds good, but is all bit goofy and re-enacted.
This guy sounds like the real McCoy!

Jeroen

[pranavGTI]

Read the complete article, it was a real-thriller. “When he said Asia, I said, good luck with that,” Joe says, finishing his drink was an awesome closure touch. But back in my mind I was wondering if such gray-market for European cars exist in India. If so, what price we would be ready to pay for such real-beauties.

[TSIboy]

Originally Posted by GTO

If you love long-form articles, this incredible story is for you .

Link to full article

Always fan of good reads like these. Time well spend!



Plenty of articles out there. Shouldn't we have a seperate thread for long automobile reads like these?