We always get our van

With apologies to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, I couldn’t resist writing about the seizure on October 19, 2009 of a 1965 Volkswagen Bus by officers of the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in the Port of Los Angeles. The Bus was in a shipping container, along with three old Volkswagen Beetles, scheduled for export to the Netherlands. The officers were engaged in a random, but routine, examination of outbound cargo. Per standard protocol, they ran the four vehicle identification numbers (VINs) through a law enforcement database. To their surprise, the results showed that the Bus was listed as having been stolen in Spokane, Washington on July 12, 1974. A quick check with the Spokane Police Department confirmed the report. The Bus was seized. Investigation revealed that the woman (she cannot now be located) who owned the Bus in 1974 had taken it to an automobile upholstery shop in Spokane, from which the theft occurred. Allstate Insurance Company, the vehicle’s insurer at the time, paid the woman $2,500 for the loss and acquired title to the Bus. Fast forward to 2009. The Bus was purchased by an automobile restoration company in Arizona, which fully restored it to original condition and was in the process of selling it and shipping it to a collector in Europe. There are no indications that the Arizona company was anything other than an innocent victim, but, since the vehicle had been stolen, it did not have a true title. Investigation has yet to reveal how the Volkswagen Bus got from Spokane in 1974 to Arizona in 2009. Allstate, though, is suddenly in possession of a classic, fully-restored, low-mileage 1965 Volkswagen Bus, with an estimated value of $25,000. The wheels of justice grind slowly.