How to see if a car still exists

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David W
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Post by David W »

I'd not seen this and it is very interesting.
Actually I'm not sure it is appropriate information to have in the public domain. It would be a help to anyone trying to clone a vehicle or forge the documents.
I might have a larger vehicle databse in front of me than most and I was a bit puzzled by many of its results.
Vehicle numbers that come up as no match seem to be either scrapped or numbers held on retention. Also many vehicles I know to be scrapped are still shown. It seems those written off by insurance are the major culprits for still being "live". You might think some have been repaired after being sold on but they do not show up with a change of owner so I guess these numbers are still in limbo 9in many cases up to years later).
So the information is interesting but far from accurate, particuarly about older cars that may or may not be scrapped.
<i>Edit: In fact it is very misleading. I have just entered the details of a restored classic 1960s Jaguar I look after. It has been on the road with a VED disc for at least the last two years yet it doesn't come up. Similarly our 1993 ZX draws a blank too.</i>
David
pmhpmh
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Post by pmhpmh »

More records seem to have errors than dont!
One of my cars shows as manufactured 6 months AFTER date of first registration.
One of the others shows 11 + months!
How can a Database obviously derived from the DVLA get it so wrong???
I will give you a clue, Government IT Database projects never get it right first time (or on time).
nick
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Post by nick »

It shows all the cars I've checked as being manufactured on the 31st of December in the year they were registered.
Stinkwheel
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Post by Stinkwheel »

Thats quite normal. Many many cars are registered on the 31st of dec. Dealers trying to meet sales targets for the year and get big bonuses tend to pre-register some slower moving stock to get the bonus and discount the slowewr moving pre-reg no miles cars.
nick
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Post by nick »

What I mean is, my Xantia was registered on 7th August 1997, RAC site shows it as manufactured on 31st December 1997.
One of our BXs was registered on 15th June 1984, RAC show it as manufactured on 31st December 1984....etc etc
They don't appear to have exact date of registration, so they just seem to show them as being "manufactured" on the last day of the year by default.
P 2501
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Post by P 2501 »

Mine too. Registered April 1997, but date of manufacture is 31 dec.
I think you are right, if they don't know the date it just defaults to 31 dec.
beezer
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Post by beezer »

Already have I put this site to good use. The following ad is on eBay:http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 39190&rd=1
If you check the registration of the blue one it shows 5 previous owners rather than 2 stated by seller. By a process of elimination I have found that the missing digit on the other car is a 7. This has had 3 previous owners.
Might be reasonable explanation but...
nick
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Post by nick »

A friend at work was not best pleased when I showed him that RAC site.
He has an old (and quite valuable) personal reg plate that he's owned since 1972 and is currently on a retention certificate. Or at least he thought it was.......
It now seems to be on an 18 month old silver Merc CL500, which he knew nothing about until today!
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