I sort of want to root for Michael's father having owned the car.
Now Shelby American knew who the legal owner was. It would be normal procedure for them to bug the legal owner to pick up the wreck on a periodic basis. And thinking about what MrMustang would do, Shelby American is probably invoicing the legal owner a monthly storage fee for their trouble, yet the legal owner is not responsive to picking up their abandoned wreck, nor paying the monthly storage fee. So if Shelby American is going to the trouble of getting a mechanics lien after 4 months, just how likely is it that the legal owner is going to respond if given notice that there is now a mechanics lien filed on the wreck that they have abandoned. How likely is it that owner is going to pay several months of storage fees on a wreck? I am going to say that there is probably a 99% chance that if the legal owner has abandoned the wreck, ignored picking up the wreck and had no intention of paying the monthly storage fees, that Shelby American eventually got the mechanics lien and sent the wreck to the junk yard.
Given that I believe that the most likely outcome is that legal owner had abandoned the wreck and that Shelby American got the mechanics lien, I also believe that it is highly unlikely that Ann Abidin was the legal owner on August 1963. It would make more sense for Ann to buy the wreck from the junk yard. Well I suppose it is possible that if she owned the car back in August of 1963, that she had a change of heart and repurchased the wreck from the junk yard because it was cheaper to do that they to pay months worth of storage fees at Shelby American to get the wreck.
Now if the legal owner just happened to be the distraught widow of Paul Cunningham, who really never wanted to see the car again, I could understand her ignoring Shelby American asking her to pick up the wreck and ignoring the monthly storage fee invoices.
So what happened next, who knows? How about this? Albert says to his mom Ann: "You know how I went down to the junk yard to get a used side mirror for the Edsel stationwagon that I accidently ripped off when backing out of the garage? Well, when I was at the junk yard I saw this really cool Cobra racecar with 'minor' damage that I bet I can easily fix." And the rest is history.
