by caribougone » Fri Feb 26, 2021 7:22 am
At last, as of today, I LEGALLY OWN the Epic!
Nobody was sure whose car it really was and there were no papers in the car. The family who own the barn did a thorough search but the registration was not to be found. The only possible clue was something found on the back seat with 'plate BRP769 turned in Nov 18/82' scribbled on it. That's probably when it last broke down, a brake problem I would guess as the drum innards were all disassembled in the trunk. The last owner would have had to return the licence plates to get a refund on their remaining insurance. All licencing and basic car insurance here is done by ICBC, a branch of the provincial gov't.
Chatting with local oldtimers led me to a sweet old lady who had lived on Quadra Island back then and had owned the car around 1980. She couldn't actually remember selling it and was kind enough to go into an ICBC agency and ask if it was still in her name. It was not. Had she given it to her daughter? (who now lives in New something state in the USA) The ICBC agent said no, the daughter's name was not the one on file either, and added that they are not allowed to tell who the mystery person was. Privacy regulations and all that... But some important information WAS gleaned from this! They could apparently see who the owner was, so the car was in their system and still registered in this province. So all I would need to do was transfer ownership, not register the car anew. This was good news.
To pry the owner's name from their database, I was advised to mail a letter (a notarized statutory declaration no less, on a form MV1484) detailing my failed efforts to find the owner, along with a cheque to a special ICBC department and wait eight weeks for a reply. I think this government department must be frozen in the last century. Anyway, a letter duly arrived stating the last known owner and his address. I vaguely remembered him - the old man with the cows who passed away some years ago. Well I must prove to the gov't that I have tried and failed to contact him. The grumpy old lady who has run the Quadra Island post office for years was very suspicious as I insisted that I wanted to send a registered letter to someone we both knew would not receive it. With the rejected returned letter as proof I had attempted to contact the owner, ICBC finally transferred the car into my name this afternoon, graciously charging tax only on the scrap metal value of its weight.
Up to this point I've been hesitant to spend much on the car, never being sure if I'd ever be able to legally drive it. I did buy new brake cylinders and such. (Herald/Spitfire parts actually) Otherwise it's been mostly been a lot of taking things apart, cleaning, painting, lubricating, and putting them back together. Now I can better concentrate on making it roadworthy, looking forward to taking it for a spin around the island, hopefully in the not too distant future.