The 20ft "Horton Hauler" white enclosed car trailer is still stolen and at large
Thanks everyone for your concern and good thoughts
See text below for more details.
Mark
Portland Or.
Thanks JIM for sending the alert!
It has been a crazy 19 hours but we now have the vehicles back! A neighboring county police department found them abandoned on a closed car wash lot. We had to retrieve them from the county impound lot and have a tow truck deliver them back home.
NO TRAILER so apparently the TRAILER itself was the theft target.
Initial inspections (done in poor light and in a hurry so this needs to be rechecked but it is the first news):
Rovin D4: Some minor damage to the Rovin paint. Disappointing because it was nearly perfect and ready for the Concourse. (they must have tried to PRY OPEN the engine compartment even though it was not locked.... go figure... so anyway there are a couple areas where paint was damaged). Engine & Mechanical no apparent damage. YEA! The canopy top mechanical pieces did not come back with the car.:(
Messerschmitt KR200: I think this one has faired even better. At first look only thing we saw was some rubber trim was pulled off and a sidelight was tilted down. It is somewhat dirty with a bit of mud and has several greasy black marks on the paint. Interior looks good, no damage and they did not steal the CLOCK!
Overall, we are very pleased we got them back! And the quick recovery probably really minimized the damage. We are grateful to YOU and Mark Hatten for your assistance and support, the Atlanta police department (reporting the theft across Georgia), the Dekalb police department for the recovery, and Cymill Motors towing & impound lot (they were very nice and appeared to taking extra care with handling cars. The staff was very interested in "those little collectable cars").
Time for some sleep.
Thanks,
TL
On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 11:40 AM, Jim Janecek
Got it, will do what I can when In a few hours.
> My guess is that they will try to dump the cars someplace when they realize they can't sell them.
> Jim
> On Jul 13, 2011, at 10:23 AM, TL Spangler tl.spangler@...
> > wrote:
> > Hello Jim Janeck & the Microcar Museum,
> > Can you help us get the word out to the Microcar community that we had two Microcars Stolen from our house early this morning (2:30AM 13JUL2011)? The trailer and cars are currently on some sort of watch list with the Georgia police and we are spreading the word among fellow microcar owners as well as a few law enforcement folks that we know from going to car shows.
> > Vehicles Gone Missing:
> > #1 1958 Messerschmitt KR200: Yellow with black fenders. VIN # 69233
> > #2 1953 Rovin D4: Pale yellow.
> > #3 2011 Horton Hauler 20ft enclosed trailer, white.
> > (We can send the VIN numbers later if you want them, I don't have them with me.)
> > As you probably recall we bought both of these vehicles from Bruce Weiner.
> > Owners:
> > Lynn Lomas & TL Spangler
> > Lynn Cell
> > XXX-XXX-XXXX
> > TL Cell
> > XXX-XXX-XXXX
> > Home
> > XXX-XXX-XXXX
> > Atlanta, GA.
> > Any advise you have about getting the word to Auction Houses or Ebay or typical buyers of Microcars would be appreciated. (IE In case the thieves try to sell them.)
> > The text below has some more detail and is what I sent out to our friends & neighbors near us:
> > Really bad news on the microcar front. Some noise like a loud thump or bang woke me up at ~2:30AM today (13JUL2011). I got up to look around and see if anything was awry and to my horror Lynn's new cart Trailer was GONE! Both MicroCars were in it and it has been stolen! The only thing remaining was our broken Gorilla trailer lock (It was sheared off with some kind of bolt cutter) and a couple sets of wheel chocks they drove over as they took off. Plus as we discovered this morning the front right tires on Lynn's truck was totally flat because the broke the valve stem (I suppose so we couldn't chase after them if we saw them).
> > Obviously we are still in shock. The police came with a few minutes of our 911 call and they put the trailer & cars on a statewide watch. All are officially reported stolen.
> > Our only hope is that it will be recovered after the thieves open up the trailer and have no idea what to do with what they find inside. We are keeping our fingers crossed but are essentially stunned. Keep an eye out for a sparkling new 20' car trailer abandoned some ware around Atlanta with a 1958 Messerschmitt KR200 AND a 1953 Rovin D4 inside it.
> > These cars will be very hard to sell on the legal market and to make it harder we plan to tell all our MicroCar friends to be on the lookout for someone trying to sell them. Maybe get the work out via the MicroCar Clubs as well as watching Craig's List & Ebay for someone trying to sell them.
> > Very Very Sad, Shocked, and Mad all at the same time,
> > TL
> > PS I'm in Jury Duty today, so far my name has not been called. Hopefully I won't get called into a case as the day progresses on.
> > This link has photos of our Rovin D4 back when it was in Bruce Wieners Museum:
> > http://microcarmuseum.com/tour/rovind4.html
> > And pics of the Messerschmitt are here:
> > http://www.flickr.com/photos/tlsphoto/s ... 391798496/
> >
> >
> >