Newbie looking for help and information / early S1

[Simon Bennett]

Hi Everybody

I'm a newbie so thank you for accepting me and please bare with with me.

To my story .. I am desperately trying to find out any information of a very early FHC E type I purchased last year from a family who's father had owned the vehicle before he sadly passed away. Unfortunately the father had lost the original registration document for the vehicle which incidentally he had parked under an apple tree and left the car there for over 30 years, so as you can imagine the state of it when I purchased, a real basket case! .. however everything was there albeit everything needed rebuilding and replacing, it has all matching numbers and now the vehicle is currently under full restoration.

I have been in touch with the DVLA (UK) and they can't provide me the original registration as they no longer hold records past 1983 so before I accept a age related plate I was wondering if any of your members have any suggestions how I could obtain the original registration or any history? I have all the other details (below) and I am drawing a blank on google searches :(

Chassis Number - 860123
Body Number - V1469
Engine Number - R3227-9
Gearbox No - EB 2382 JS
Colour - Cream
Interior - Red
Original Distributor - Henlys London
Original Dealer - Fields Engineering, Crawley, Sussex
Date of Manufacturer - 20 December 1961
Date of Dispatch - 8th Jan 1962
First Owner - SWJ Millard & JME Bellard

Any help or assistance would be greatly appreciated

With the kindest regards
Simon

[malcolm]

Hi Simon.
Try going to www.xkedata.com where you can search cars by various different criteria. Try dates before numbers if I was you.

[malcolm]

Just entered your dispatch date on the site I mentioned above, and it comes up with your car, in cream, with all the correct numbers. Last seen 2015 according to the database. Doesn't show reg. number though, so you'd need to play with the site/searches. Must be a way of getting it from there.

[malcolm]

Enter just the car number in top field, then press find this car button. Shows who you bought it from? and shows a reg number (I think!) M3592; sounds odd, but a friend of mine has a series 1 with a similar number. I think there is a story as to why some early S1s had strange numbers!
Sorry if this is info you already have

[Heuer]

Not listed in the JDC Directory of Owners and Vehicles although cars 860124 and 860118 are. Registration number would probably have been one to three numbers & three letters around that era unless it had a private plate. M XXXX would have been a Cheshire registration but those plates stopped being used in 1932. If the car was registered in Suffolk then the registration would have had the identifier CF so you are probably looking for "??? CF?"

Have you applied for a Heritage certificate? Sometimes they have the registration number if the first owner filled in the warranty card.

[Stuart Exelby]

Simon - I picked up from your post that it was likely to be a Sussex reg - if so, likely Brighton - but as Crawley isn't on the coast, the dealer could have gone to Guildford or even Croydon to register the car. (Yep, I know that doesn't really help.... sorry!)

[mgcjag]

Hi Simon...not sure if its still available but a couple of years ago i applied to the dvla on a special form they had and they sent me copies of everything they had details for.(1968 mg)....i found out that a private reg had been used for a few years and also all the previous owners and even a copy of the old log book whick showed the original reg.....think that there was a £5 fee....think this came under the freedom of informatio act, sure ive also read here on the forum of others doing the same.....also read through this post http://www.myetype.co.uk/forum/viewtopi ... ory#p55335

[chrisfell]

If the owner of the car during the 1970s, when DVLA took over registration of vehicles from local authorities, didn't send details to Swansea it is possible the car has 'lost' it's original reg number. This could be why the DVLA can find no trace. But that would suggest the car has been off the road for 40 years or more.

[neil4444]

Have you asked if there were any family photos of the car ?
It must have been quite a thing to take delivery of one of the early cars so perhaps it might have been recorded on film for posterity ?

[Heuer]

Simon - I picked up from your post that it was likely to be a Sussex reg - if so, likely Brighton - but as Crawley isn't on the coast, the dealer could have gone to Guildford or even Croydon to register the car. (Yep, I know that doesn't really help.... sorry!)

Up until 1973 the registration was done on a County basis rather than by town, so CF would have been used across the whole of Sussex regardless which office they visited in the county.

[Simon Bennett]

Enter just the car number in top field, then press find this car button. Shows who you bought it from? and shows a reg number (I think!) M3592; sounds odd, but a friend of mine has a series 1 with a similar number. I think there is a story as to why some early S1s had strange numbers!
Sorry if this is info you already have

Hi. I do have this info but thanks anyway. I do find the M3592 registration interesting. I did contact Paul at XKE and he said someone posted this as annomiously, there seems no record of that reg?

Thanks again fella, much appreciated.

[Simon Bennett]

Not listed in the JDC Directory of Owners and Vehicles although cars 860124 and 860118 are. Registration number would probably have been one to three numbers & three letters around that era unless it had a private plate. M XXXX would have been a Cheshire registration but those plates stopped being used in 1932. If the car was registered in Suffolk then the registration would have had the identifier CF so you are probably looking for "??? CF?"

Have you applied for a Heritage certificate? Sometimes they have the registration number if the first owner filled in the warranty card.

Hi David thanks for your post. Yes I have got the heritage certificate and I even spoke to them, they said the first 200 cars were only sold to celebrities, mostly racing drivers and this could be why they don't hold the registration as the car may not have been registered straight away. How true this is I will never know.

Cheers again
Simon

[Simon Bennett]

Hi Simon...not sure if its still available but a couple of years ago i applied to the dvla on a special form they had and they sent me copies of everything they had details for.(1968 mg)....i found out that a private reg had been used for a few years and also all the previous owners and even a copy of the old log book whick showed the original reg.....think that there was a £5 fee....think this came under the freedom of informatio act, sure ive also read here on the forum of others doing the same.....also read through this post http://www.myetype.co.uk/forum/viewtopi ... ory#p55335

Hi Steve, many thanks. I did speak to the DVLA but they said quite simply, if you don't know the registration they certainly won't if it was before 1983. They were helpful but said even though I have all the other relevant numbers these are not held on file against a registration.

I read through your link. Cheers Si

[Simon Bennett]

If the owner of the car during the 1970s, when DVLA took over registration of vehicles from local authorities, didn't send details to Swansea it is possible the car has 'lost' it's original reg number. This could be why the DVLA can find no trace. But that would suggest the car has been off the road for 40 years or more.

This is more likely the case Chris. The car was left under an apple tree for over 30 years with everything stripped out, so probably been taken off the road a good 10 years before that.

Cheers Si

[Simon Bennett]

Have you asked if there were any family photos of the car ?
It must have been quite a thing to take delivery of one of the early cars so perhaps it might have been recorded on film for posterity ?

The old boy did not have much of a family and was a bit of a recluse according to the representative who I dealt with. The house and all the belonging was sold off in a house clearance.

My only hope is if someone in crawly picks up a post like this and remembers the car. I've even tried to google the first original owners with no luck. Henlys London are long gone and the engineering firm is also long gone in Crawley.

Thanks again Si

[Stuart Exelby]

Up until 1973 the registration was done on a County basis rather than by town, so CF would have been used across the whole of Sussex regardless which office they visited in the county.

David - I hate to differ, but..... For a start, I understand "CF" is allocated to Suffolk, not Sussex. Secondly, there are plenty of records which indicate certain letters were allocated to certain offices rather than a county-wide basis. For example, AA is Hampshire and while it might be used by any of the offices across Hampshire, it was more likely by the Winchester office as the County town.

But BK, RV, and TP (for example) would only have been used if the person registering the vehicle applied to the Portsmouth office (Portsmouth being in Hampshire for those readers who aren't in the know!). These are unlikely to have been issued if the applicant applied at Winchester. It was, at the time, a very manual system - reliant on picking the next number from a list, held locally in the office.

I guess my point was, it's not an exact science - the dealer in this case, in Crawley, could well have gone to an office outside of the normal catchment for Crawley to register this particular car. It could have been allocated either a county mark or a town mark - or one from outside Sussex if the applicant went there.

[Heuer]

Sorry, I used Suffolk as an example and then it got carried forward!

The codes for Sussex were:
PX (Sussex West) - Portsmouth
PO (Sussex West) - Portsmouth but GPO was assigned to London
PM (Sussex East) - Guildford
PN (Sussex East) - Brighton
NJ (Sussex East) - Brighton
AP (Sussex East) - Brighton

[Stuart Exelby]

Simon - presuming the car was registered post 8th Jan '61, but was not hanging around at Fields too long after they received it, and presuming it was registered somewhere in Sussex - then some of the most likely registration series are: TAP - in use from Aug '60 to Jan '61; UAP - used from Feb '61 onwards; TNJ - used from Sep '60 to Feb '61; UNJ - used from Mar '61 onwards; TPN - used from December to April '61; TPM - used between Nov '60 and March '61; APO - used between Dec '60 and Feb '61; BPO - used from March '60 onwards; APX - used from Feb '61 - although, if you are 'lucky' and it was registered in January through the Portsmouth registration office (for West Sussex) you might just have PX plus the numbers - PX being in use as a two-digit registration series from Feb '60 to Jan '61 (when APX took over).

Of course, none of that really helps trace the "real" registration...... sorry! But it might help if you were looking for an age-related mark at some stage.....

And, by the way, if you haven't looked it up already, here is where your car would have been delivered ........ the premises at 92 High Street, Crawley, were obviously demolished at some stage and Barclays Bank now sits at the spot where, in the '60's, Fields Engineering stood - between 86 and 92 High Street, Crawley. Fields Engineering Co (Crawley) Limited being listed as an Area Dealer - with recovery service available out of hours - in the service directory of 1967 - presume it would not have changed too much from '61.

[christopher storey]

Stuart : it was 1962 it was delivered, not 1961 . Do you have the series in use between say Jan 62 and March 62? And does the Sussex County Records office still exist ?

[Stuart Exelby]

That'll teach me! OK - I'll look that series up!