buying a damaged car with no log book

If you realy want the car, get the chassis number, reg and all the info and spend 20-30 quid on a hpi check, that is well up to date and will tell you if theres any outstanding finance on it, and if its on the police and insurence lists as stolen and what category damage its classed as. Spending that small amount now will save you a hell of a lot in the future. Plus do a standard check via ya phone by texing the reg to 83600 and that will confirm what car it is, cc, colour and its its an insurence write off or if the plod have an interest in it.
Hope this helps and good luck.

Bear in mind that if you spend a fair whack of cash making the car roadworthy again, it will always have that mark against it, making it harder to sell on and will always reduce it's value.

Be careful when you apply for the log book that DVLA doesnt reply with a letter saying its a Cat C and you need to have it VIC checked. Ive found most the time you need to reapply for a v5 on a damaged vehicle this occurs. Mainly due to the previous owner knowing it will be harder to sell with a cat c marker against it and blags you saying its a cat d.

I bet that will be a cat c not a cat d as you state , this would mean a vic check first before you can apply for a logbook 

Contact seller, ask for vehicle details and say you're going to leave a deposit and apply for a logbook. If he's lying and it's Cat C (which seems fairly likely) it might scare him enough to come clean.

6 weeks now unless you have the new keepers bit.

Good points there stinkwheel, I've bought cat c and d cars a few times, and I could tell what category it was by looking over the car and a good inspection, sometimes cars are written off due to being beyond economical repair. I bought an Audi a2 which was a cat c because the owner has clipped a car in front cracking the bumper and the air bags going off, the repair bill by the owners insurence company was well over £2500 so they wrote it off as the a2 needs a new complete dash after the bags have gone off!!
Cat c I sent that bad as long as the repairs have been done to a good standard by an approved repairer, buying a cat c that bob blogs bought through a salvage auction online and him repairing it in his garden shed I sent the kind to be buying. So there's pro's and cons for buying either a cat c or d, just as long as its been repaired to a good standard.

Buying a 70s or 80s classic that's been damaged and put into cat c I sent a major problem, as IMO the cars built back then were big pieces of metal welded together with no fancy crumple zones or stupid sensors to consider.

Let us know what car it is scaffold and how your getting on with it.

Unless its newish or going to be worth good money its probably not worth a garage repairing it and selling it on, not worth the time and/ or hassle of explaining its been damamged and repaired, factor in how long a repair would take if you cost the time out when you could be repairing a customers car.

Having said that why go to the trouble of buying it in the first place unless it was to swap a load of bits over - either that or its worse than they thought it was.