I ran into that when attempting to transfer the title on my Darrin that I purchased last year. The car had been titled in Virginia in the past, then sold to an older gentleman in Florida. Florida required the title to change from the VIN to the engine number. When I purchased the car in Virginia, it never ended up getting moved to Florida it appears, a representative of the seller who I understand is in nursing home car signed the title and his rep sent it to me. When I when to the DMV in Virginia knew the number was not the VIN number so I called the rep. We tried several different methods to get the DMV to accept and put the correct number on the title with no luck. I was just lucky that the representative happened to be the county tax collector of the county that the seller was in. After talking to his assistant it came up that he could create a new Florida title that he could send me to resolve the issue. Everything would have been fine if we had that about the fact that the seller still had to sign the title BEFORE he mailed it to me. After I mailed it back again and got the signature everything went well. I the representative had not had the ability to create a title with the VIN instead of the engine number on it I am not sure how I would have go about it.
