Well there is obviously a story behind this & before I get any irate comments, nope I do not know the full story and I do not want this topic to turn into a "he said" "they said" war.
What I do know is what the owner stated on madmechanics before the topic was removed.
This is what I remember reading from the current owner:
The car was sold by extreme to someone (not the current owner), who was involved in a rear shunt accident with the car. The damage was supposedly relatively minor but that since extreme did not sell individual panels the only place the insurance company could get the rear bumper was from mercedes. The price was so high the insurance company were going to write the car off but only pay the owner 15k.
As stated in the ad the car was written off cat C & the current owner bought it damaged & repaired it himself.
During the time all this was going on, the dtm KIT was released by extreme & the price dropped.
Regardless of all the accusations of people sabbotaging ebay auctions or dropping prices on purpose etc, the current owner has stated it has been in an accident, so I suppose it is up to any future purchaser to get the car inspected & to thoroughly check it out.
From a personal point of view, I would question why the first owner that crashed the car was willing to accept 50% of its value if it was only minor damage. Anyone with enough money to shell out the price of a genuine 360 on the car would surely have enough to repair it themselves if it was relatively minor rather than loose all that money.
Im not saying dont buy it, since if you add up all the parts needed to build one it doesnt seem a bad deal for one that is all finished, just the whole insurance story behind it doesnt seem to add up to me.
My guess on the story would be that the original guy that paid 30k from extreme got a decent payout after the accident & the opportunity to buy the car back from the insurance. This represented better value to him than not claiming on the insurance and trying to repair it himself. The current owner then bought the car for insurance damaged value & repaired it himself hoping to sell on at a profit (nothing wrong with that b.t.w.)
I assume things started to go sour when extreme started selling kits & suddenly repairing this car didnt seem like such a good moneymaking deal anymore.
As I said before, doesnt change the spec of the car. Its a cat C write off which is described as 'An extensively damaged vehicle which the insurer has decided not to repair, but which could be repaired and returned to the road'
The price the car sold at doesnt particularly matter to extreme, it does however matter a lot to the current owner. The issue isnt that the car sale price devalues the kit, but the other way round. They are just hacked off that the price drop on the kit makes their car worth much less.
What the owner is saying is that extreme have purposely started selling kits just as they bought this car to do up, then purposely dropped the price of the kits just as it came up for sale to devalue thier car. Doesnt make sense to reduce the price of your kit just to supposedly annoy one owner.
As for all the other ebay accusations etc, I dont know anything about these, draw your own conclusions.
These are my take given the info above, as I said these are not hard facts, just me drawing my own conclusions from what the owner stated on madmecanics.
Carsnotpromises - Its a second hand car that was in an accident after extreme sold it, even if they did make a comment based on someone enquiring about its history, why would that be unproffesional? I would say it would be unproffesional if they said NOTHING about its history to someone trying to trace what has happened to it.
Vanquish status has been updated many times, they have the panels, but it just isnt a priority for them at the moment. I cirtainly wouldnt hold my breath for this anytime soon.