Back to what RUM is for and taking up the scurrilous tangent.
Maybe the Register should create a Register of Known Fakes which it could publish on the website so that it will very much harder for folk to pass cars off as genuine when they are not. This can include split cars where the chassis forms one car, the body another and the engine a third. An old trick which was used to great effect with Bugatti and in common usage now. Of course one of those cars is entitled to the original ID, but which? Normally, I believe, the chassis wins.
No doubt this would cause a great deal of grumbling but it would be a public service and protect those cars left that have not been messed about to boot. For instance I have someone making persistent enquiries about my Scootacar because it has its original engine. It seems most do not. Collectors value such things. Not the best example but I do not wish to cast a stone and as far as I know I do not own a fake nor a replica at the moment so I cannot offer a current experience but if Nick can get conned then so can any of us. I can point to Messerschmitts I have created out of various parts bought in as extras, when enough parts are then collected together to form a kipper car, then through a six and win. These are non original cars but still fully Messerschmitt. To me a Messerschmitt like Black Bazzer which has always been whole, never tampered with, is very much more desirable than one of these bitsas, but if we did not have the bitsas there would be far fewer Messerschmitts about. So I do not know where you draw the line. That said there are clear attempts out there to make image of cars that either do not exist any longer, or worse, cloned from cars that do exist. It gets somewhat bizarre when the world population of a 'rare' car is greater than that original made by the factory. These fake cars, in some cases hidden among many freely admitted replicas, should be outed. I feel sorry for owners who might be left holding the baby but the situation is analogous to a stolen car. It is the risk you run buying stuff. Normally if you do your research you do not get caught out.
What think you?