TexasOlds

Howdy from Texas. I am looking to track down my 1968 Cutlass Convertible that I sold in 2013, down here in the Houston, TX area. I still have the vin: 336678M369759. I have stupidly deleted the emails that had the buyer's name, info, etc. on it when I went to clean out old gmail messages.

Any help would be greatly be appreciated!

edzolz

Google with the vin number and texas vin. You will have to join some of the search companies, but if it is still registered in Texas it will show up.

jaunty75

Don't hold out much hope that you will find the car. Most states will not release owner information unless you have a valid reason in order to protect the owner's privacy. I have experience on this with some states but not Texas. Ohio, for example, will let you search by VIN, and if the car is titled in the state, it will tell you the date the title was issued and in what county, and that's it. No owner name or address or anything like that. According to the Texas DMV, you can go to a DMV office and fill out a request form, but you will probably have to supply a valid reason for needing to know who the current owner is. Wanting to buy the car from the owner is probably not a valid reason.

Another issue with the VIN search services is that many require a modern, 17-digit VIN and won't work with the 13-digit VINs in use in the era when your car was made.

Googling the VIN is always suggested, and that never works. I googled your VIN just now and turned up exactly nothing. 2013 is not that long ago, so the car might very well still be in your area, but it also could have been resold five times by now and be anywhere in the country. If you REALLY want to find it, you will probably need to do something like hire a private detective.

edzolz

That is funny because when I googled "Texas VIN and the number" I got at least six responses from title search companies. That is why I said he would have to join their search company.

jaunty75

This doesn't mean anything. Just google "Texas VIN" without the VIN number or "VIN search" without any state name and you get pretty much the same thing. You're just getting advertisements from VIN check companies, like Carfax, which are services that will tell you if the VIN is valid and whether or not the car associated with it has had accidents and the like. They're not services to help you locate a car with a particular VIN.

One site that does search for a vehicle with a particular VIN has this prominently on their home page indicating who can legally obtain vehicle ownership information by a VIN search. Unless the OP fits into one of these categories, the Texas DMV is not going to reveal who owns a car with a particular VIN.

"Companies qualified under Federal Driver’s Privacy Protection Act (DPPA) including tow companies, automobile dealers, government entities, attorneys, financial institutions, private investigators and insurance companies can access Texas motor vehicle information."

Note that it says that "private investigators" are authorized. But I wouldn't be surprised if that wasn't a blanket authorization but rather only PI's who have a legal reason to find an owner. Just wanting to know out of curiosity, which pretty much describes the OP's reason, is probably not a good enough reason.

Note also that the quote above references the "Driver's Privacy Protection Act." This law was passed in 1994 and prevents the release of personal driver information by state DMVs without the vehicle owner's consent. Very interesting reading, and it pretty much dooms any effort by the OP to find out through normal government channels who currently owns his car.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Driver%2...Protection_Act

jaunty75

As much as it frustrates us as hobbyists in trying to track down a particular car, I actually like that this law is in effect. Just because I want to find a car doesn't mean that the current wants to be found and bothered by me. He has a right to privacy, and, putting myself in his shoes, I would not like it if someone could simply write down my car's VIN (when it's, say, parked in a parking lot somewhere) and then walk into the nearest DMV office and get my name and address. I value my privacy, too.

TexasOlds

awesome, thanks yall! this post was actually a result of not finding anything out on the interweb... i.e. googling vin, etc. I'll keep plugging along and hopefully will get lucky! i am shooting myself in the foot for deleting the emails I had with the buyer after my gmail got full and needed to clean it out. i totally spaced and didn't save that info at the time... so i am hosed, unless I get lucky. Thanks again for the ideas!