History Series Part 6- Fake Corvette Documentation

History Series Part 6- Fake Corvette Documentation

The Holy Grail of Corvette Documentation and Paperwork

Corvette Paperwork from “The General” – General Motors, that is!

The official paperwork for your Corvette originally generated by Chevrolet / GM is the ultimate provenance that you can have. These various forms introduced the buyer to his new vehicle and aided Chevrolet’s internal accounting. Your Corvette’s specific VIN number (Vehicle Id Number) appeared on several forms.

Much of this documentation also describes in great detail all of the original factory options installed on your Corvette as well as the delivering dealer. If you have this paperwork, future buyers do not need to worry that a corrupt person created a fake car.

Watch out for fake Corvette documentation!

There is a caveat. There are several people who create fake Chevrolet documentation, including items for Corvettes. I won’t do them any favors by telling you how to locate them. They even go as far as “aging” their fake paperwork using heat and chemicals so it appears to be “old”. The counterfeit documentation ads are ridiculous. It is “not meant to be used to misrepresent any vehicle”.  Yeah- right! If you don’t know what you are doing- they are VERY difficult to tell from the real thing.

Telling the difference between real and fake paperwork (for a price)

The National Corvette Restorers Society (NCRS) offers a paid service where they will examine copies of any GM paperwork for authenticity, and tell you their conclusion as to if it is real or not.

From the NCRS website:

Document Validation Service
  NCRS will compare any of your GM documents to the GM records contained in the Shipping Report and if verification can be achieved, will establish the authenticity of your factory documents. Unfortunately, the shipping report does not contain the vehicle options. A letter containing the information you request will be mailed to your NCRS address on record. The cost for this service will be $100.00 USD. Pay by Credit Card or PayPal.

How do the people at NCRS know for sure if Corvette documentation is real or not? Are they geniuses? Well, no. Chevrolet had a unique accounting code linked to each Corvette VIN. If you have a list of “most” of these codes, you can easily determine if “most” of the paperwork is authentic. In other words- if the secret (unpublished) accounting code on your paperwork matches the one in the NCRS database for your VIN, you are a winner. Sorry to ruin the magic.

Click here to visit the NCRS “Document Validation Service” site

As always- post any questions and I’ll do my best to point you in the right direction!

The next blog article will discuss methods to locate paperwork from Chevrolet.

LINK TO THE NEXT BLOG IN THE SERIES.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FIRST ARTICLE IN THE SERIES.

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