Nightmare of 427 provenance

[Nedsel]

There are some missing facts here, which is leading to some incorrect speculation. The damaged 3272 was considered "spare parts" once the legal owner of the car (and the VIN) chose to rebuild it with new parts in the late 70's. The original numbers were removed from the "scrap" and the leftover parts, including the chassis and much of the body along with ancillaries, were sold to a collector and given a new VIN. But it happened that the chosen VIN was not legally the property of the collector; it belonged to a car that was presumed destroyed back in the 60's under the assumption that no identifiable remains of it would ever reappear. But that car surfaced roughly 16 years ago, and a valid title to it was reissued. That left the car that we suspect was originally 3272 without a claim to the VIN inappropriately attached to it years earlier. The then-owner of this car correctly agreed to surrender any claim to that VIN, leaving the car under discussion in this thread. It is clearly an original 427 Cobra and various clues suggest it started life as a 32xx car, however there are no numbers at all to conclusively prove its original identity. It masqueraded as another car for a number of years and made its way to Europe in the process. Today it has had its VIN removed once again. It is the fault of the former owner who attached a VIN to it that he did not legally own that created the situation we have today, and unraveling it is not an easy or inexpensive thing to do.