A 'cut and shut' car forms the centrepiece of an unusual exhibition at Gloucester's Eastgate Shopping Centre aimed at ensuring consumers buy wisely and safely. ...

The cut and shut car has been lent to Gloucestershire County Council by the West Glamorgan trading standards department as part of national consumer week.

The vehicle is really two separate halves of different cars which have been welded together and then sprayed.

Trading standards officers say it is not illegal to sell cut and shut cars, provided the work has been done in a professional manner and the vehicle is roadworthy.

But they add it is debatable whether consumers would want to buy such cars if they knew the whole story.
—"Be wary — it's a car of two halves," The Gloucester Citizen, November 7, 1998

The Automobile Association said yesterday that its engineers were reporting more and more cases of unscrupulous motor traders trying to 'con' buyers with botched repair jobs.

A spokesman said: 'One of the most dangerous practices is that known as 'cut and shut'. It is an unhappy marriage of two or more vehicles which have been involved in accidents. '

He said a Ford Fiesta XR2 with a potential top speed of 110mph was found recently to be the front half of one car welded inefficiently to the back half of another. Usually such cars were insurance write-offs which had found their way back into the system.
—Clifford Webb, "MP's fight against car 'death-traps'," The Times of London, August 16, 1986