How does a 1953/4 car end up on a B Reg

Good morning grizz,

I'm not too familiar with Your registration system, but If I got it right the letter at the beginning, in this case B, stands for a certain year?

Which year in this case?

Thanks for that, grizz.

If it was something like a VW beetle, with body and chassis to be separated, it could be Your 50s car on a 1964 chassis - if that is how british administration works.

There have been lots of split or oval beetles on late 60s/very early 70s ex-automatic chassis in the nineties over here in Germany.

Automatic chassis always had the "better" rear axle setups (like all the super beetles) for beefed up engines, so they were converted to handshifters.

It could be this or it could be an import,Dad had an Austin Princess that came from Jersey it was a 1975 registered as an R plate 77. Its all changed now but back then they registered with the current plate

You do occassionaly see vehicles on odd newer registrations, sometime I think they might have given a car the current registration plate year if it had been imported and hence this was the first year in the UK.

Is it a 1964 B or a 1984-85 B?

For reference back in the 1960's vehicle registrations were carried out by local offices and not all were given the A reg to issue for some reason, some 1963 vehicles were registered as A and some weren't. From 1964 onwards I think all had the B reg.

It used to be that if a registration plate was removed froma pre 1963 car it would be re registered on an 1963 A (even if it was old) but now you get an age related plate.

Hi, From what I remember at the time and have learnt subsequently. Local offices did issue registration numbers of as said mainly three letters three numbers. two of the letters were among a batch used by an office, the third letter and the numbers gave them a sufficient spread of available reg numbers. Around '63 increasing car sales put a lot of strain on the reg numbers available, so it was decided that when an office ran out, usually towards the end of the year or earlier if a busy office, they would start adding a suffix letter (A) to increase availability and the same again in '64 (B). It was decided that this was a successful policy an from '65 (C) would be made permanent across all registrations.

Also at that time registration numbers would be allocated on the year that the vehicle was first registered. So if the vehicle in question was built in '53 and used or kept on private land and then not registered for the road until '64 it would have a (B) reg number but would state '53 build year (if it was declared).

There are many and various reasons for use on private land, military, farmers, landed gentry, breakdown vehicles on trade plates, imports, plus many more I expect.

Colin

haat Colin said at the end is correct. There were cars coming in from abroad mostly Minis that were 3 or 4 years old converted to right hand drive then DVLA would give reg for current year. My mate used to do it. DVLA tightened it up and you would have to give full details of car before giving it the year of manufacture. My own Corsair was never put on the road until 1980 (not an import) and got a W reg. PRT544W. When I bought it in 1999 DVLA woudnt let me have Historic class (tax free) and I had to have an age related plate AVG185D

Hi, Yes in the 60s into the 70s it would have been a case of knowing someone and/or a little 'drinkie' involved, allegedly.

Colin

I sold an NSU quickly in 1971/2 with VAN11 on it .Was quite normal then Sold it to Carmarks. for onward sale


Nothing dodgy about it back then ,quite normal.



before they changed the rules a vehicle first imported got given the registration mark for that year. I had a lhd mini imported from holland 1980 ish, converted to rhdrive & issuued a"T"