How to milk things out of the DMV California?

[Daaz]

This is a bit of an off-topic thing, but I want to use the opportunity to ask the “ameriikan elävät” here an US-related question. And to make it a fun question, it’s also DMV related. (The Finns wondering what DMV is, just think AKE and you’re there.)

The thing is that I’d like to buy a car (yes, it’s a Merc) from a local parts dealer here. The car was imported from La Jolla (CA) to be chopped and dismantled, and hence there are no papers needed for re-registration. But the car is a solid California thing – great (bodywise) for restoration.

I called the oh-so-helpful DMV 1-800 number (not toll free from Europe, BTW...) and asked if there was some way of getting a copy of the certificate of title or a “junk slip”. There was not, because the car is still registered to some “Jerry” over there (and this I know ‘cos the lady accidentally asked me, “are you Jerry?” when I gave her the VIN-code. The lady also told me, that “Jerry” (sorry, the “owner” who’s name we are not allowed to say as appears later in this story) still owns the car and has it as a pawn for a bank loan. That’s funny, since the car is in Finland under a foot of snow at the moment.

The odd twist in this story is that the DMV records aren’t public like they are in Finland! They are actually top secret (figured by the way the lady was saying “I don’t want to lose my job” over and over again when I asked if she was allowed to give me this Jerry’s name and address).

So the question is: how can I contact this Jerry person and ask for the paperwork (as it is obvious that only he can get them from DMV)? Which DMV employee do I have to bribe to give me “Jerry’s” whole name? Any comment here would be helpful, guys!

-Daaz

PS. The lady also had hard time understanding I wasn’t calling from California. I told her several times that I called from Helsinki and have never even been to the US, but she insisted I came over to the DMV office personally.

[Saul]

There was not, because the car is still registered to some “Jerry” over there (and this I know ‘cos the lady accidentally asked me, “are you Jerry?” when I gave her the VIN-code.

So the question is: how can I contact this Jerry person and ask for the paperwork (as it is obvious that only he can get them from DMV)? Which DMV employee do I have to bribe to give me “Jerry’s” whole name? Any comment here would be helpful, guys!

When the lady asked you if you are the Jerry or not, you should have said "Yes, that' me. Let's see if you have my correct address in your database. Maybe you should call again and try giving the VIN-code again!

[Daaz]

When the lady asked you if you are the Jerry or not, you should have said "Yes, that' me. Let's see if you have my correct address in your database. Maybe you should call again and try giving the VIN-code again!

That is most obviously what I should have done, but at that point I didn’t know about the secrecy policy. Although, before I got to speak to the lady (before which I had to press like a dozen of buttons – “Press one for service in English, prensa dos si usted tiene una cabra española” etc) there was a recording saying “giving the DMV false information can lead to criminal persecution and we will ship you to Guantanamo without a sentence”. And this is true! (Well maybe not the orange overall thing but the button pressing and the recording at least...)

But any comments from our superturbo-wannahave section from across the big water? Speedy300dturbo? AMG Dave? Mygreen300d? Elvis?

-Daaz

[paloviita]

You could try carfax.com. Basically, they should be able to list you the vehicle history. For money, of course

I've tried it once, but didn't find what I was looking for (was trying to find out about the first owner and registration...) Got my money back though.

By the way, my current Mercedes is also from La Jolla (San Diego).

[Daaz]

You could try carfax.com. Basically, they should be able to list you the vehicle history. For money, of course

Hey, great, thanks for the tip! I'll get on it without delay!

-Daaz

EDIT: No luck! "A CARFAX Report does not include owners' names and addresses. This allows us to comply fully with the 1994 Drivers Privacy Protection Act that prohibits third parties such as CARFAX from distributing such information."

AND

"We are unable to provide you with vehicle history information for vehicles manufactured prior to 1981, when the 17 character VIN became standard."

-Daaz

[Johnster240D]

The whole pawn shop title loan thing sounds fishy to me.

So I guess the first question would be "Are you sure the car is legal ?" The only title loan places I've seen work like this (not sure if you got these in finland)
-If you need money, and got no other place to go, you go to a title loan place, they put a lien on your title and give you some money- if you pay them the money back, they release the lien and you go on your merry way (I'm sure they charge a fat interest rate too...) If you dont pay, then they keep the lein and normally try to get the police or a towing company to "reposess" the car and put it in an impound lot (until you pay them back) and if you never pay them back, they sell it at auction (or on their own lot...) to make the money back. I saw a neat 6cyl W116 once upon a time at a title pawn shop...

Point being, if there is still a lien on this thing, then "Jerry" doesnt want anything to do with the car- Its a bad mark on him becuase the title place wants it.
The title place isnt going to release the lien unless he pays them back. if there IS a lien on this thing, you are "up a creek without a paddle"

If not, ignore what I just wrote.

I can offer two more options:

1) Here in Ohio, I once bought a car from a guy who never gave me the title- what did I do ? there is a provision in the local law for "abandoned vehicles"- basically it says that if a vehicle is "abandoned" on property you rent or own for more than 6 months, (and isnt reported stolen) then you can go to the county (city?) courthouse and get a court-ordered title for the car. (the presumption is that if it isnt reported stolen, and nobody comes to claim the car (and you affadivit that reasonable attempts have been made to contact the previous owner...) then noone cares and you can have the car.
it cost me $150 usd in court fees and $800 for the car up front, but I got a VW Corrado G60 out of the deal =)

2) Its called a "title search"- I did it to find out who the real owner of the G60 was. You send can download the form from the states (I'm hunting for the page to use as an example) website and mail it to them. I think you need a $5usd fee also... In return they send you back the previous owner's of the car with the address that they reported to the DMV. Its lke carfax but much more official- and not available online.
This was in 1999, so things might have changed since then.
I'll see if I can find that page and post back.

Hope this helps -John

[Daaz]

Hello John and welcome to the forum!

Thanks for your advice! This whole thing has started to sound fishy, but now that you brought up the pawn system, I made up a theory: Jerry first pawned the car and then sold it without the papers. He got “paid twice” for it and used the whole sum on crack.

Then again, the grumpy DMV lady mentioned something about a bank, so maybe the car has been a guarantee or surety for a bank loan, not a pawn in a pawnshop. Although, which bank would accept a 30 year old car as a surety?

Then the options:

1) I don’t think the first one would work, since the car is here and I doubt that the Finnish city of X would have the authority to grant the American certificate of title I need (even if the wrecking yard company would try to get one).

2) This “title search” sounds more promising. The only thing that makes me wonder is that if I can’t get the info from the DMV, how can I get it from somewhere else (referring to the Drivers Privacy Protection Act)? But if you can find anything new about this procedure, please let me know!

-Daaz (No, it’s not a Finnish first name, it’s a Russian carburetor)

[Johnster240D]

Damn dude....I'm doing some looking and its bleak.

First- about the lien- the lien that a bank puts on the car and that a pawn shop puts on the car are the same (or at least notated in a similar manner), so she may have gotten them confused OR saw the that a lien was on the title and assumed (initially) that it was a bank (or a pawn shop, how many poor californians are out there...)

Since there is a lien on the car, any official dealings with the state are gonna arouse suspiscion around you. "Why is this guy (in finland no less) trying to ask about a title for the car..." If there is a lien on the car and you physically have it you must surrender it to the california police so the origional lienholder can pick it up (do stop laughing, please =)

After some surfing...
You could submit a form INF 70...

http://www.dmv.ca.gov/forms/inf/inf70.htm

...which is what I did the Ohio equivalent of. But it requires that you have a defineable reason (see section D) which is on the "instructions" (button if you read the .pdf) or on form "inf70_r8_2004" (??) but I cant get a hold of that online anywhere. Other acceptable reasons are on the calif. codes listed below the "notice to record subject: bar (vehicle code 1808 et al.)

I think that your reason is appropriate (you could just say that you are "contemplating the purchase of the car and want to be sure of who the previous owner is..." but I cant be sure that such an excuse would fly. Not even sure they'd mail it back to you (the info you request comes through the US mail...)...

If you call them again (which you might try...) and it comes out that you have the car, they sure aint gonna help you, as the car "belongs" to the pawn shop/bank. Even if you knew Jerry's last name.

Note, that I am not advocating any misrepresentation or illegal action on your part.

If you can get those instructions- it might work. maybe the girl on the phone can give you those "instructions" verbally.

Previously, when I mentioned abut getting a court ordered title- the title was ordered by the court and in my home state. If such a provision exists in finnish town X they would give you a finnish title- correct ?
Why do you need an american title ? would a finnish title fit your purposes ?
And if you cant get a court-ordered one in your name from your town- could the yard (which has the car...) go through their channels to get one ? In the states a mechanic can assume ownership of a car the exact same way (if a customer leaves the car on the mechanic's lot for more than X months, the mechanic can just get the car signed over to him by the court by calling it abandoned. This would get you a title.

Hmm.... Hope this helps

-John[/url]

[Henri Junkkala]

... doggone it, I wrote a mile long article here and my 2-year old son went and pushed the "back" button a couple a times when I wasn't looking... I'll just give y'all a director's cut then...

Translation help:

Online:
http://efe.scape.net/index.php
This one is not good but its half-decent and has a lot of the technical words as well. The same problem as with Finnish translation always: the programs don't understand the suffixes we use so every word would have to be in singular form. Example:

Mäntä = a piston, this one the program understands but none of the below it doesn't:

Männät = the pistons
Mäntää= do smthg to the the piston as in "he was examining the piston"
Mäntiä = do smthg to the pistons as in "he was repairing the pistons"
Mäntään = to the piston as in "he attached the piston ring to the piston"
Mäntiin = to the pistons as in "he carved his initials to the pistons"
Männässä = in the piston as in "there was a crack in the piston"
Männissä = in the pistons as in "there were carbon deposits in the pistons"

We have, as I recall, 38 different suffixes that have a tendency to twist the main word also - and then there are the the numerous different slangs spoken around Finland which sometimes differ so much that it brings communication problems. One slang (slang of the old sailor town Rauma) is actually called the Rauma language... And then there are the 8% of the population that speak Swedish and the percent or two in Lapland that speak the anxient Saame language... Well, in Mersuforum we try to stick to the formal language but even then there are certain words such as "venakoppa" = "Venttiilikoneiston kansi" = "valve cover" or "loota" = "vaihteisto" = "gearbox" that make translating nearly impossible for a robot.

If you'd really like a finnish translator book for a car enthusiast, there is at least one publication called Technical vocabulary (ISBN: 9525089452 ) that could do but I'm afraid that Amazon is out of stock:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... 9?v=glance

Perhaps the finnish Alfamer could help if you ask them nicely?
http://www.alfamer.fi/naytatuote.asp?haku=S113

[Daaz]

Sorry John for not answering right away, been too busy to even read the forum!

If there is a lien on the car and you physically have it you must surrender it to the california police so the origional lienholder can pick it up (do stop laughing, please =)

Sorry, I’m trying! I can imagine a police patrol hooking up a trailer to the patrol Chevy and driving through Alaska and Siberia to come and repossess the car. They get stuck just after Mongolia ‘cos there are no roads in Siberia (only a rail track) and they get hungry, so Jeff goes out to look for a 7-Eleven but never comes back and Gerry will eat his foot but dies out of malnutrition.

OK, but seriously, I looked up the form INF 70 and it does seem a way to get some clarity to the issue. Although I doubt that my situation will present any valid reason for the DMV to give me the information. Whichever way, it’s worth trying. I should, as you said, call them again and ask for more help.

Note, that I am not advocating any misrepresentation or illegal action on your part.

No disclaimers needed, this is Finland. But of course, there is no strong incentive here either to bend the rules, just want to get the damn title.

If such a provision exists in finnish town X they would give you a finnish title- correct ?
Why do you need an american title ? would a finnish title fit your purposes ?

There is really no question here about the ownership of the car. But the bureaucracy is quite heavy on the car registrations, so ones needs the original (American) title to register and to pay the import taxes. So it’s not about who ownes the car really, it’s about who’s allowed to register it.

There is also a second option here, and it is that I simply don’t buy the car. But that would be a shame…

-Daaz

PS. Henkka, nice presentation on the Finnish postpositions! Also, there is something seriously wrong with the people who make these on-line translators. Even the English to Finnish ones translate sentences like “I can fly” to “I oil canister to fly”. And Finnish to English is harder by 1500 %.

[Ylläpito]

Looks like there aren't 38 suffixes after all, maybe it just felt like it when teachers tried to make them all stick between my ears.

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/finnish-cases.html
Judging by this there are "only" fifteen different suffixes in our language.
And no prepositions since the suffixes are in their place.

Good luck fighting bureocrats, I'm off to Germany.

Henkka

"Mäntä, männän, mäntänä, mäntää, männäksi, männässä, männästä, mäntään, männällä, männältä,männälle, männättä, mäntineni, männin.
Easy as a pie. Not.

[Zeitgeist]

Hyvää iltaa.

I'm very fascinated with your language. There seems to be some mystery about where it comes from and how it ended up being related to both Estonian and Hungarian. Most of the Germanic and Romance languages can be traced back to their sources, but Finno-Ugrian seems to have sprang up from nowhere. That's pretty cool. I'm thankful for the internet which allows me to meet and converse with all of you folks, but I'm a bit embarassed [Valitan] that I can't do so in your own language.

Kiitos.

[Saul]

Hyvää iltaa.

I'm very fascinated with your language. There seems to be some mystery about where it comes from and how it ended up being related to both Estonian and Hungarian. Most of the Germanic and Romance languages can be traced back to their sources, but Finno-Ugrian seems to have sprang up from nowhere. That's pretty cool. I'm thankful for the internet which allows me to meet and converse with all of you folks, but I'm a bit embarassed [Valitan] that I can't do so in your own language.

Kiitos.

This is a quite old topic and discussion turns to off topic, but...

Basicly all other languages in Europe from Spanish to Swedish are Indo-European languages (yes - indo refers to languages in India) and they are very closely related if compared to other group Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian etc. which are Fenno-Ugric languales. Fenno-Ugric languages are propably much older than Indo-European. Some sources even claim that Indo-European evolved from Fenno-Ugric languages. That's the reason why it seems that Fenno-Ugric languages have just "sprang up from nowhere". "Fenno-Ugrics" were there before "Indo-Europeans" came and conquered "the fields of language". And I'm not an expert. Just read something about languages from somewhere.

[Kevin Johnson]

Old thread but I thought I would relate one (just one of many) experiences with California DMV. This was about 12 years ago and the statute of limitations is up and I live safely in Florida -- far, far away.

I collected Renaults at that time. About 5 years prior I received a call from someone in San Jose that owned an R17 and would I like it? It was sitting on the street in front of his house waiting to go to the scrap yard -- he had already gone to DMV and filled out a scrap paper giving a wrecking yard permission to crush it.

So, years pass by. I basically stripped everything possible off the body and even torched off the entire front end. So it was an empty steel shell of the passenger compartment.

It came time to move to Florida and I was presented with the problem of disposing of the shell. I had a flatbed trailer and tried to take it to a scrap yard. They would not take it without a copy of the release from DMV.

Soooo, I drove the trailer over to DMV.

The woman behind the counter asked me if I was ________ and honestly I said that I was not. She said that she could not give me a release for the vehicle to be scrapped. I told her that I knew the release had already been issued by DMV about 5 years prior. That didn't matter.

I asked her what she suggested. "Contact the previous owner." I told her that he had long since moved away (the truth). She then had no suggestions.

I told her that I had brought the remains of the body with me so she could confirm that it was VIN in question and that it was clearly scrap metal. She did not want to do that. Mind you, they want to do that when you bring in an out-of-state vehicle or have lost the title.

I asked her why DMV would not do this when I was clearly trying to do the "right thing" and dispose of the car properly? I told her that I knew if the car was abandoned on the side of the road then a towing service could retrieve it and easily obtain these papers. Was she essentially telling me that I should abandon it on the side of the road?

After all, I realized (and she did too) that they had no idea who I was, just that I was not ______.

Silence.

So I left. Another DMV adventure complete.

Well, I finally just had a friend with a very large bull-dozer run over the shell and compact it into a small mass of metal which they picked up and dropped into their trash bin.

I talked to some friends about it and one of them related that he had similar problems. His solution? He used his front-end loader to dig a series of large holes in which he buried the cars. At that time there was a new housing development going in where he did so. Nice, huh?

Many other people solved similar problems (not me, btw) by simply pushing their vehicle into the aquaducts that bring water down from the mountains. They have drained sections of them and recovered hundreds of abandoned (often stolen) cars.

[Sami H.]

Again off topic but nevertheless...

I told her that I knew if the car was abandoned on the side of the road then a towing service could retrieve it and easily obtain these papers. Was she essentially telling me that I should abandon it on the side of the road?

I reckon I would have done so. I would've waited until the dusk and dumped the empty shell somewhere in darkness and let the towing service deal with it. After all, they would've never known your connection to the car, right? And this I would have done simply due to irritation, frustration and for protest, although I am a lawful citizen afterall.

Here in Finland, I have seen littering increasing over the years. Not just the candy papers and plastic bottles but car batteries, washing machines and refridgerators dumped in ditches. It's shame but in my mind only due to (a) diminishing number of junk yards, (b) junk yard open hours, (c) and most of all the fees you need to pay for every piece of litter you bring to the junk yard. The goverment or private junk yard companies or who ever is responsible for the fees should think it over and let the people drop the waste in for free. The other choice is ditches full of car tyres, paint buckets, car batteries and refridgerators. That really pi**es me off.

It was close one time I dumped a TV set somewhere. There is this "Recycling" company which collect old stuff from citizens and sells them with a profit. The only worry is that they want money for everything. Even if I personally brought the TV set to their lawn they would've charged me for it! I said the lady behind the counter that I'm going to dump the darn TV to their ditch! Instead I knew a junk yard 20 miles away where I could bring the TV for free (luckily it was open that day). Probably the russian fellows picked it up instantly when my rear lights faded in the evening...