The Lost Car Registry

Recovering the One that Got Away

People across the globe, particularly middle aged men, are scouring the web, searching classified ads, trolling classic car auctions and contacting total strangers in hopes of locating an old car they wish they wouldn't have sold.

Car enthusiast now have new way of tracking these lost cars through the Lost Car Registry, a company determined to find "the ones that got away." The Lost Car Registry has hundreds of postings from both previous owners and current owners of old cars.  

Keith Ingersoll founded The Lost Car Registry in 2001 as a result of years of trying to locate an old 1969 Ford Mustang Mach I that his father, a former drag racer, had sold twenty years prior. Since its debut The Lost Car Registry has gained hundreds of listings by people hoping to be reunited with an old, much loved car. Ingersoll created the site to be free to anyone that wished to list a car including those who have an old forgotten car rotting in a barn on the back 40. Virtually anyone can use The Lost Car Registry.

Tracking down a car that was sold 30 or 40 years ago has its challenges; many of them have been junked or scrapped. Not to mention there are laws regarding the privacy of DMV records that have put a kibosh on finding an old car through paper trails. In addition cars made prior to 1981 don't have history reports with companies like Carfax.com because it wasn't until then that the government standardized the VIN system.

Before the days of the internet, searching for an old car was comparable to finding your lost wallet in Downtown Las Vegas. Owners were forced to search classified ads, attend auctions, hire private detectives and make personal contacts. The odds of reuniting with a lost car were far worse than they are today thanks to listings websites like The Lost Car Registry.

Now, seven years after the conception of The Lost Car Registry there are untold amounts of websites that list old cars and other memorabilia, many of them exclusive to particular makes and models. The Shelby American Automobile Club is one of these. They receive requests regularly from people searching for their lost car.