Shelby Maverick sighted!

The "Vintage Vehicle" tags as they're called in Alabama are for life, too, and you only pay for the first time. They just updated last year and now we can also run a model year tag for anything up to 1976 I believe, but the sequence of numbers can't be used on but one car. That means since Alabama tags only used a county number prefix then a sequence of numbers, no letters, it means you could actually have the exact same tag number for multiple years, so whoever registers that sequence first, gets it and the rest are unusable, no matter if they were from a different year. I am looking for a 1974 Alabama tag with the prefix 32- for my car, as that is the prefix for my county.

Oh, no inspections of any kind here, either. Anything 1974 and back didn't have titles, and tags are based on $25 tag fee + tax based on value . My 99 pickup runs about $35, the 93 Mustang was $25 [no tax]. Even a new vehicle tag is only based on .03 sales tax.

 

Yeah, that's what made it such a drama for me to get my Mav tagged in TN. Apparently you can scrawl a bill of sale in crayon on the back of a McDonald's napkin and get a tag on anything pre-'74 in Alabama. In TN, they needed a title, or a registration from the previous owner and a bill of sale.

So, the first time I go up there and I have no luck because the previous owner never registered it, didn't even own it long enough. My bill of sale from him is worthless, and I need to get a copy of the AL registration.

So I find the guy who sold it to the guy I got it from and he kindly provides me a copy of the registration. Turns out he's a cool guy, lucky for me, else I'd have to get a salvage title. (Can't do a "title bond" in TN like I can in MS. Nice)

Second time I show up with the bill of sale from the previous owner, plus the bill of sale from the owner before him, whose name is on the registration I now have. That's no good either. Got no proof the guy I got it from had any legal right to sell it, they say. I say "Sure I do, here's the BoS where dude #1 sold it to dude #2, and here's the one where dude #2 sold it to dude #3, who's standing here in front of you with two proofs of residency, picture ID and all kinds of docs."

She then hands me a stack of forms, tells me to fill them out, get them notarized, something about applying to get on a waiting list to inquire about scheduling a police inspection - OR - she says I can get a bill of sale from dude #1.

I say, "So, for me to get this car legal any time in the next six months, you're telling me I need to falsify some documentation and come back here."

She nods. I'm stunned.

At this point I'm considering selling it to my brother in MS, getting him to tag and title it, then have him sell it back to me. I cannot decide which method is more shady. But I do know which one is more expensive.

So I email dude #2 and dude #1, explaining the situation and making sure it's cool with everybody that we're gonna pretend dude #2 never had the car. It's cool.

Dude #1 then sells me my car for a pittance, which I immediately give back to him so fast you'd never notice money changed hands if you didn't blink, he writes me a bill of sale, witnessed and everything, and I'm the proud owner of my Maverick, again.

I stroll into the county clerk's office, take a number, read several chapters in a book, and a few hours later I'm walking out with a tag, finally.

Fun stuff.

 

"Apparently you can scrawl a bill of sale in crayon on the back of a McDonald's napkin and get a tag on anything pre-'74 in Alabama."

So true! I've had bill of sales written on grocery sacks [paper], cardboard, even one on a envelope! As long as it signed, it was legal. Now they have changed it a bit, it has to be dated, with the buyer's and seller's address on it. No formal form is required, so any paper goes, as long as they can make a xerox copy of it!