The 'E' Type Forum

Hi all

I've spent the day back tracking through two folders of paperwork I got with my series 1 E-type when I bought it and am trying to put together a picture of the cars history which is proving to be fun. I have documents going back to 1982 and all the previous vehicle registration new owners forms so have been able to find out who previously owned the car and how long they had it.

There have been 5 previous owners but the one that caught my eye was the earliest one I have a record for. The car was bought by a chap in October 1983. On the Registration document it then listed 1 previous owner since April 1977. That previous recorded keeper is listed as a Mr Robert Alan Swift Care of News Limited Australia.

So what I am trying to find out is did News Limited own the Jaguar and is there some interesting history behind it and what could I do to find out? What would a series 1 be worth in 1977, 10 years after it was built? Was it seen as an expensive car then or had prices dropped off?

Also the weird thing with the Vehicle registration documents is that they list number of previous keepers since April 1 1977. Did something change in 1977 to the way vehicle information was recorded?

Any help much appreciated

Yes when you went to tax your car they took the old green log book from you and issued a new one in the form of a single page document. This happened to me back in 1977 when I went to tax my car at the tax office in Preston. So my log book states the same "one previous owner since 1977".

So is there any way of finding out who owned the car before 1977 and is that the case with most classic cars?

When I was living in the UK, I sent off to DVLA for the previous history for a few vehicles. For those that had previous buff or green log books, they sent back a copy of those which had been replaced by the V5 which were subsequently transferred to microfilm. So yes, you can get it. Sometimes though, if a continuation book had been issued for the old style log book, you will only get that, not the first one.

As 64OTS says you can fill in form V888 and send to the dvla requesting information on previous owners so long as you have a legitimate reason for wanting the information (accident investigating, parking or other motoring offence investigation etc etc). However....you will probably be out of luck now as they have, it seems, tightened their criteria for legitimate reason for divulging data they have and just being the owner is seemingly no longer a legitimate reason for knowing of previous owners. This is probably due to the looming General data protection regulations.

There are other threads on here where people have asked and been told no...it is a bit of a shame..I got a lot of stuff on my car way back when I asked but now the dvla are much more guarded about who they give data to I am afraid.

Pre 1977 the car registration data was held by local authorities. Many just destroyed old logs when the data was transferred to the new central dvla system in 1977. Some did retain their old logs so if you know where the car was registered it might be worth making enquiries with the local authority although even if they have the old log books there is no guarantee they will show them to you.

Thanks for the info Julian, very useful. I have a list of previous owners dating right back to 1971 in the history file but no sign of the original registered keeper. The original dealer that sold the car was P J Evans of Birmingham so I did wonder about contacting them (now Evans Halshaw) but I would have thought most sales records older than 10 years would be destroyed.

It would be just nice to fill in that initial gap between 1967-71.

Trev

Sometimes the Heritage Certificate will have the first registered owner

V12 Epyte wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 21, 2018 5:44 pm

Sometimes the Heritage Certificate will have the first registered owner

First registered to PJ Evans of Birmingham on the heritage certificate. Not sure if that means it was sold as stock, used as demo car etc?

If it was first registered to Evans, then it is more likely that it was a demonstrator than an already sold vehicle, as most owners of a brand new car would be upset to find they were the second keeper in the log book