A fellow named Stan Aiton bought this car only last year, but he’d been saving parts for the restoration and modification of just such a car for the last 41 years -- ever since a neighbor gave him some rare Lancer parts when he was 15 years old. So Stan was crushed when the Lancer, fitted with those parts, was stolen earlier this year. Thanks to the actions of some Good Samaritans and understanding police, however, the car is back in Stan’s possession.
Stan bought the Lancer last March when living in Virginia and almost immediately began stripping it down for restoration. He said the car was about 60 percent complete – including new paint, a new windshield and newly reupholstered seats – when he took a job in Texas in January of this year. Without a garage in which to keep the Lancer after his move, Stan stored it in a 24-foot enclosed trailer, and kept the trailer parked at a storage lot in Duncanville, Texas.
In late July, the trailer and everything in it disappeared. Stan filed a police report, but investigators had little to go on until the trailer was spotted in August wearing another set of stolen license plates. The police arrested the man hauling the trailer on multiple counts of grand theft auto, accusing him of using the trailer to steal other cars, but the trailer no longer contained the Lancer or any of the parts Stan had been collecting for years. It looked as if Stan wouldn’t see the contents of the trailer ever again, but as it turned out, the Lancer hadn’t gone very far.
Earlier this month, Stephen Ramsey and Adrian Britton at Ramsey’s Rods and Restoration in Fort Worth, Texas – less than two hours from Duncanville – were offered the Lancer for $1,500 by a couple looking to bail their nephew out of jail. "We get calls all the time from people who want to sell their cars, so I went out to take a look," Britton said. When the sellers began bringing out boxes upon boxes of parts, Britton began to suspect something was up, but brought it back to the shop anyway. "Steve just looked into my eyes and said, ‘That’s not right.’" The Lancer didn’t have its VIN (vehicle identification number), but after some digging online, Ramsey found message board posts from Stan asking people to keep an eye out for his car.
Within an hour, calls were placed to at least three different police agencies and an email was sent to Stan. The next morning Stan and the police all converged at Ramsey’s, and Stan positively identified the Lancer and all the parts as his. "We already work with the Fort Worth Auto Theft Task Force Unit, so we were able to convince them not to impound the car and let Stan take it directly home," Britton said. "We were also able to get the paperwork done on the spot to straighten out the missing VIN." Ramsey was also able to recover a portion of the money spent on the car, Britton said.
Stan, who was able to bring the Lancer home this past Saturday, said he found that the thief or somebody who had access to the car while it was missing had started installing some trim on the car, but scratched the paint in doing so and damaged some other parts. "It was like they were going to get it running," he said. "I guess the missing crankshaft made them decide they were over their head."
This story and the accompanying photo came to us from our friends at Hemmings Motor News. The selfless actions of the folks at Ramsey’s Rods and Restoration, who paid money for the car and then sought out its rightful owner, are noteworthy, as is the decision by the Fort Worth Auto Theft Task Force Unit to permit the car to go back to the rightful owner without impound.
