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MG MGA - historic vehicle UK registration process.

Hi all, can anybody talk through the UK registration process as I do not have any documents for my vehicle other than chassis number and wish to register as a historic vehicle with age related number plate this will be for my 1959 MGA roadster. As a minimum I would like to start within the correct government department with a contact if at all possible.
Many thanks
Mark
Mark Dollimore

Mark,
You will need a form V55/5 which you order via the DVLA web site.
Are you a member of the MG Car Club (MGCC)? This is where membership becomes valuable. If you are a member, you pay the MGCC a small fee for them to send someone from the MGA Register (someone is in Romsey, which I guess is not far from you) to your address to verify the vehicle and it's age and (if it all stacks up) they will then forward support for an age related number to the DVLA along with your completed V55/5 form and DVLA fee of £55 for first registration.
DVLA will then send an inspector round to verify the numbers etc, that have been submitted (to your address, and with no further charge) and if all is OK, you will get a registration number.

If you are not a member of the MG Car Club I am not too sure what you would do.

regards
Colin
Colin Manley

I found the process a whole lot easier.

I completed the form, attached the evidence, photo's of chassis number etc.

Two weeks later, hey presto, a log book arrived in the post along with an allocated age related new registration number.

I didn't have anyone coming to my house to check.


Aleks
Aleks Stojanovic

Colin

It's probably changed since I did it in May 1998. Mine was a USA import. I merely took the appropriate DVLC form, shipping import document, MoT, insurance certificate and a Heritage Certificate plus a £25 first registration fee into the area licencing office (Preston for me back then) and it took 10 mins. I couldn't choose the reg number. I was just given the next age related number on the list. After that I simply told the insurance company the reg number and I think the MoT garage (although I don't think they were that worried) and that was that.

Steve
Steve Gyles

Alex's
When was your experience?

The one I recounted was December 2016. Certainly DVLA have tightened up a lot recently.

Regards
Colin
Colin Manley

Hi Colin,

I encountered the DVLA process back in 2011 and was very similar to Steve's.

Aleks
Aleks Stojanovic

I went through the registration process last year (2016) but not with an MG. Every thing got tightened up a lot after the Bugatti affair.

As Colin says first obtain a V55/5 which you order from the DVLA. You can't download it as it is a carbon type duplicate form. Fill in as much as you can, quite a lot is not relevant as it only applies to new cars but anything that will appear on the V5C is needed. I came unstuck on the "date or first registration" where I didn't have a clue - the car was from 1926 and no makers records exist. They need a day, month and year and I ended up with a best guess taking evidence from chassis numbers with known dates and providing lots of evidence. I had to go round the submission loop twice to get everything accepted.

Bear in mind that historic vehicles are treated the same as any other first registration by the DVLA and will be presented to the person concerned as their next job. They get around 2000 historic/special cases a year out of 2 million plus applications so there is a good chance that he/she will never have seen on before and have no clue what an MGA is. Also, for modern cars there is a makers code that automatically fills in a lot of the form and I am pretty certain that such a code will not exist for the MGA. This leads to a potential problem where make and model get combined in the make field so, rather, than being made by MG your car will have been made by someone like MG MGA Roadster and the model field will be blank. There is nothing you can do about this at the moment as the model field cannot apparently be manually filled in. DVLA are promising a solution but don't hold your breath. I am assured that legally there is no problem but the insurance person struggled to find the car to complete the insuramnce database. There is possibly a risk that the automatic cameras that check you are insured will call foul but I have not heard of this happening.

Send off the V55/5 with your money and wait. It shouldn't take more than a couple of weeks for a response. They may or may not send an inspector which is now contracted out to SGS based in Kent but with peole all over the country. I got an inspector round. This is not a technical/roadworthiness inspection, it is to prove the car is what you said it is and you are not working a fiddle. He will want to see the chassis plate, engine number and speedometer (for some unknown reason) and will photograph them and the car from all sides. Evidence that the engine and car match is very important and should be sent with your covering letter alongwith the V55/5 or you couild end up being put in the "reconstructed classic" system.

If all goes well you will receive after another couple of weeks a certificate to let you have a number plate made up and then a V5C. Mine came separately. You then have to tax/insure the car or SORN it. You can't do nothing.

Any more questions, just ask.

Malcolm
Malcolm Asquith

Malcolm

Interesting. Glad I did mine back in 1998. The only recent dealing I had with them was the numberless 1800 engine I have had in my car since 2000. About 3 years ago there was a lot of discussion about engine numbers and indeed types of engines in our historic cars. I enquired of the DVLC whether they wanted an engine number for my car and they said no. Because of the relative small number of cars involved they were not interested in the engine size nor engine number as they were aware of the untraceable engine swaps that must have been carried out in our cars over the past 50 to 100 years. And so my log book, although stating it is an 1800 engine has no engine number. Mind you, I did purchase a number from a scrap 1800 so if they ever want one I can supply.

Steve
Steve Gyles

Many thanks chaps I will let you know how I get on.
Mark
Mark Dollimore

This thread was discussed between 09/02/2017 and 13/02/2017

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