A Manhattan lawyer will be getting his stolen Jaguar convertible back after 46 long years!
Ivan Schneider is set to get his luxury car back that was stolen in 1968 in New York.
A U.S. Customs and Border Patrol analyst running a routine export check through a stolen car database found the vintage 1967 stolen Jaguar XKE, but the catch was that it was already on its way to Europe in the Pacific after being shipped from the Los Angeles and Long Beach seaport.
Mike Maleta, a California Highway Patrol investigator, said that when the investigators zeroed in on the car it was on a cargo ship on the way to the Netherlands. They then immediately went to work trying to get it transported back to Southern California.
According to the officials, the California man who shipped the vintage car bought it a few months ago from a man in Turlock, Calif. The man had told him that the car was in his garage for 40 years.
When officials informed Schneider that they had found his Jaguar he was not ready to believe them. "After we convinced him, he was excited," said Maleta.
Schneider told The Associated Press Wednesday that he would think of his car every time he bought a new one. He confessed to a penchant for luxury cars and has owned quite a few exotic ones. "I've always said that (Jaguar) was the prettiest," Schneider, now 82, said.
The investigators are trying to find the thief who stole the car then.
