UK registration method in the early 1970's?

[zuvendis]

I'd like to wrack the brains of somebody who's been in the motor trade (or buying new cars) a lot longer than I have.

Just out of general curiosity, will somebody mind explaining how pre-2001 registration numbers were issued regarding the district?

When a brand new car is registered today, it usually carries the prefix letters of the DVLA office local to the dealer themselves - even if the dealer have supplied the car to a person who lives the other side of the country. That clearly wasn't the case in the 70's.

Thanks to Andy at Lotus, I now know my car was despatched to the London Sports Car Centre in Edgeware, Middlesex on 25th October 1972, but the first two letters of the registration are NY, the area registration in 1972 for Cardiff; a long way from Middlesex!

Were cars not registered by the dealers back in 1972?
Did the dealer have to specifically arrange registration with an office local to the first owner?
Did the owner have to register the car with a local office themselves, before taking delivery?

Cheers!

[Apx]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_r ... erritories

Above link has lots of information, At a BL dealer in the 1970s, vehicles were swopped around quite a lot between dealers normally over colours or specs. I took vehicles supplied to Kent as far as Birmingham to exchange. they would have been registered in Birmingham. Hope this helps

[HampshireMush]

Registration numbers from this period typically started with 3 letters. It is the second pair of letters that indicated the district of registration. Your number will be NY? and the Y? are the two you need to check on not the NY

The Y? letter combination was issued by a number of regions but most were in fact in London. if you follow the Wikipedia link in the previous posting quite a way down you will find the regional listings and this will probably confirm that the vehicle was in fact registered in London.

John

[zuvendis]

John, it appears you are are correct sir! It was an old boy who told me it was the first two letters, but I see from the link it's the last two, YP, in my case, which would be london and local to the dealer. Thanks.

Would still be interested in how the registration process actually worked, if anybody knows?

[trw99]

Mark, YP was London Central. You can usually tell from the London district which dealer was the first.

As I remember it, each registration district had it's own registration office. I certainly remember going to several. There you could be allocated a registration mark if you were registering a new car, re-registering a car or a personal import. It is also my recall that dealerships carried a list of registration marks that had been allocated to them so that they could attach them to new cars as and when they were bought by a customer.

Tim

[RogerFrench]

My mother worked in the Registry office in Gloucester for many years, which is why her Honda was PAD1M.
Tim has it right, though there were occasional fiddles, as above.

[LorraineLH]

I worked in a car dealership in the 1980s and batches of registration numbers were allocated to each dealership from the local VRO (vehicle registration office) in my case Guildford. As cars were sold they were given a registration number from the list. I think sometimes customers were given the opportunity to choose from the list just in case something was relevant to them i.e. their initials, but generally the registration numbers weren't very interesting. The DVLA kept interesting ones to sell.

[trw99]

I can recall choosing the new registration for a car I bought in 1988, sat at the dealer principles desk, from a list of about a dozen he had available.

I believe it has only been in recent times (last 10-15 years?) that DVLA have kept the interesting reg nos to sell themselves.

My father chose PAY 400M for a new Rover 3500 in 1974. Appropriate as he was a chartered accountant!

Tim

[pharriso]

I worked with a guy at the Ford Research & Engineering centre in the early 80's that was lucky enough to be given TOO510W on his new Escort. Sold it for $$$ to a guy with a Contach (TOO SLOW)....

[RichC]

one of my ICI drug rep mates got his new company car ( ford capri ) from Romford dealer (ME)
A110WME.............. can you believe nobody spotted it at first!

[RichC]

TOO 510W is also a south essex number