body swaps

[Crazy Dazz]

It definitely happened.
Back in the 80's around the XE or XF era, one of Dad's salesmen got t-boned in a Falcon wagon (would have been under 2 years old as per their policy) and the insurer re-bodied it.

I'm not certain of this, but I suspect it had to do with sales tax. In the pre GST days, sales tax on a new car was IIRC around 30%. Sales tax on parts was probably less, and of course there was no tax on labour.

I never actually saw a "body in white" buts its possible the whole thing was a tax-dodge. The new "Body" may have actually been relatively complete, perhaps only requiring the engine transplanted, or perhaps not even that.

Remember that sales tax, unlike GST, was never claimable as an input credit to a business, you just paid it. To give you an idea, we had a client who was Sales Tax Exempt (a "Public Benevolent Institution.) They gave ALL their staff cars (they were FBT exempt as well) and after the minimum ownership period (12 months I think) they would trade them in at a PROFIT. Eventually a Ford dealership gave them a deal whereby they GAVE them the cars. Issued an invoice, but never collected, and traded them back at the invoice value. They would run the cars from 1st July to 30th June so they didn't have to show the outstanding invoices at year-end. As auditors it gave us coniptions.