If you’ve watched these guys videos, you would know it’s not some sort of cartoon villain trap. They took them to Detroit, showed them a ton of stuff, let them talk to a bunch of very sincere and cool engineers, gave them a bunch of unobtainium spare parts, and gave interviews on the record with executives. Let’s just say GM’s PR department is running a lot better than their cars do these days. Someone there saw the initial buzz about this find, and obviously convinced the C-suite that they could very easily score huge wins in public goodwill, partly counteracting all the “Who Killed the Electric Car” hype.

If you follow their videos, they and a handful of others have secured title to their EV-1s. There are a small number of ways the cars were able to fall out of the leasing agreement and into properly titled private ownership.

In this case, they took advantage of the fact the car was abandoned in Georgia and went to impound action, which let them buy it from the State with title, bypassing any potential agreement with GM.

This particular vehicle was sold at an impound auction under a court order. Any existing legal ownership of the vehicle prior to the auction was extinguished.