For some reason the COA thread got moved to 'Off Topic'.
Regardless, here's my response:
We can gripe about this and we have, but we really have little leverage.
Our value to the factory is strictly 'as perceived' (non-metric) marketing, balanced against the small income they get from these, and the (seeming) liability issues in releasing too much info. Which probably leaves the factory wondering why they do it at all. So while I'd love a complete history for my cars, the factory is answerable to a whole lot of people with more clout: The stockholders.
The obvious solution here is to make the transaction valuable enough to the factory that they are happy to provide the data we prefer, paying what it probably does cost them to edit the kardexes (by competent folks), issue them and accept the liability; likely not in the $150-range.
Put it this way:
There is a common enough claim that no one should care about 'matching numbers'; if that's true, why would you bother buying a COA anyhow? I disagree, in that buyers ('the market') care about that. How much is that worth?
Let's pick some arbitrary numbers: Hagerty says a full resto B coupe (IOWs, not one of the top end models, but in OMG condition) sells for $135K for "#1 Concours" to $47K "fair", with $99K "#2 Excellent".
Given that the numbers are cherry-picked, we'll knock the "#1 Concours down to $90K. I'm still going to suggest that that "#1 Concours" car is going to take at least a 10% hit for a non-original engine; $9K.
A modest proposal: Let's offer the factory compensation somewhat in line with the increase we, as owners, hope to realize with factory documentation of the features on our cars. The market value of that information will quickly become obvious, and the factory will get the returns rather than the current 'leakage' sources.
And if you 'really don't care' about that sort of thing, see above. Don't buy one.
Added by edit: to open the bidding, I will offer $5C for full documentation on my C coupe. Is that enough?
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Ron LaDow
http://www.precisionmatters.biz