Bobby Patton thought he'd figured out a way to make a few bucks off a 1965 Chevelle. He'd punch out his own trim and VIN tag, throw in a 396 and some badges, and stick the car up on a popular online auction site for a quick $100,000. That's what he did, last April. Only problem: There's more to a Z16 than that, and the Z16 guys pay attention.

A thread on Chevelles.com quickly pointed out the problems with the car, starting with obvious issues such as the homemade VIN, with the incorrect codes and sequence within it. Jeff Helms, owner of the Z16 website and registry, soon contacted the owner (with great tact, I'd like to point out), and indicated some of the issues with the car:

"Hi, Roger. Thanks for sending the pictures. Unfortunately, your car is not a Z16. Nor is the engine a Z16 engine. Nor is it # matching to the car.

"I own 2 real Z16′s, and am the owner and editor of the Z16 website and Z16 Registry. www.z16chevelle.com . . . So, trust me that I know what I am talking about (on this subject at least).

"The VIN tag and the cowl tag that you have are homemade tags, where someone cut out a flat piece of aluminum the shape of the tag, and stamped what they wanted on it. On real VIN and cowl tags, the characters are raised, not impressed into the tag. I will email you pictures of real Kansas tags in a moment.

"Further, whoever made the fake cowl tag copied the body # of a real Z16 (14629) from a picture on my website!! You will see that body number on the picture I am about to send you. The body numbers were not reused; each Z16 has a different body #; so your car could not have body # 14629 even if it was a real Z16..."

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