It gets better!! Had a closer look at the documentation of this thing of mine & I'm fairly convinced there's a 6K miles discrepancy between the engine & chassis. - As it would have been illegal to misrepresent the mileage of the new VIN on rebuild, (by using the clocks out of the original vehicle, which was written off at 12.6k miles); the clocks fitted are from the later, 2002 Puma Thunder, donor shell, which I believe showed 19k miles at the time the rebuild took place. The true mileage for the rest of the vehicle may well lag by 6k miles. One thing that made me wonder about this was the color of the oil when dipped. I could accept it being clean at first as it had recently been serviced, but here we are some 1800 miles later & it's still the color of golden syrup.
I felt really quite out on a limb buying this vehicle, knowing their rarity, the cost of certain parts, knowing it's checkered history, but as the vendor was so upfront about the whole thing, I decided to give it a shot. My opinion after nearly 6 months of owning this vehicle, - I made the right choice for me - It corners like a stabbed rat