There are far worse things out there than having your vehicle stolen, but at the same time, it’s still awful. Especially if it’s actually special to you and not just a car. Typically, though, it doesn’t also leave both you and your insurance company confused about what to do. And yet, that’s exactly what happened to Ewan Valentine, a British man and FN2 Civic Type R owner, Road & Track reports. That’s because, three weeks after his car turned up missing, the near-identical Civic Type R he bought to replace it turned out to be his actual car with what appeared to be a clean new vehicle identification number.
Valentine had reportedly owned the FN2 for about three years and, as you often do with CTRs, had started to modify it. So when it was stolen out of his driveway, he told Road & Track he began looking for a replacement that would be as close to his old car as possible. Before long, he found an almost identical car listed at a local garage. It didn’t have the same mileage, plates or VIN, but it was the same year and color, and it even had an aftermarket Remus exhaust, just like he’d put on his old car. It was only after he bought it that he started to notice a few things were a little too familiar to be a different car.
The key for the locking lug nuts being kept in the same type of bag he had used in his old car could have — maybe — been a coincidence, but the tent peg and pine needles in the trunk were a little too specific.
At least the car’s no longer missing
Plenty of people in the UK go camping and celebrate Christmas, but when he started looking a little closer, it quickly became clear that he’d bought back his old car:
“So, looking for something more conclusive, I check the satnav history,” he wrote on Instagram. “Sure enough, my address, my partners parents’ address, my parents’ address. It dawned on me at this point that my phone immediately connected without pairing. My phones is in the Bluetooth device history, my partner’s phone, and all our old phones.”
He says he then took the car to a nearby Honda garage, where the technician hooked up the shop’s computer to the ECU and discovered that the original VIN for the “new” Honda matched Valentine’s old ride. He had, apparently, just purchased his own stolen car.
The good news? He got his car back. The bad news? His insurance company appears to have no idea what to do about it. And while we don’t tend to side with insurance companies, this one is a little more understandable. Odds are, they’ve never dealt with a policyholder accidentally buying back their own stolen car before, and I can only imagine the paperwork nightmare involved in paying for a car the policyholder has already recovered. Hopefully, giving this case a little international media attention is enough to convince one of the higher-ups to cut Valentine a generous check and make this headache go away for everyone involved.
