Can you apply for a V5 mid restoration

[geofft]

Does your car have to be roadworthy to apply for a V5?

If you have the VIN and Reg No. but the car is in bits can you apply?

Thanks in advance Geoff

[ManyMinors]

In a word......Yes. Although this assumes that the car is already registered.
If the car is not registered with the DVLA and requires an inspection, it is probably a different story.

[ianmack]

It is best to apply well before the car is roadworthy. Dvla allow themselves a leisurely six weeks for this process and this is assuming all goes well. If they have any query it can run and run for months.

[Mark Wilson]

I do hope the DVLA require quite a bit more than a registration number and a VIN. This one sold last week on Ebay and it is difficult to see that it is worth £82 just as memorabilia......

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Morris-Minor- ... 7675.l2557

For the benefit of the original poster, no aspersions are being cast your way, but many on here are concerned that the DVLA don't do enough to discourage items like this from being sold and then being used to provide a new identity for a stolen vehicle.

[geofft]

Thanks all. I do indeed have the complete car, but there is a large percentage of it in boxes!

[POMMReg]

If regn on their computer, think you're okay.

As Mr,MM points out, not on their system, different kettle of fish!

[ianmack]

'I do hope the DVLA require quite a bit more than a registration number and a VIN'

When the form and fee is sent DVLA write to the last recorded keeper asking confirmation that the vehicle has changed hands. If no objection is raised then after a couple of weeks they should issue a v5c. They stress that registration is for the person keeping the vehicle, not necessarily its owner. Of course if the car has been stored for twenty years contacting a former keeper may be impossible.

In the case of sales of a v5c with vin and number plates this is a different problem. The buyer will have a v5c and needs only to notify change of keeper.

[Mark Wilson]

The registration sold on Ebay is on the DVLA computer, albeit no tax, SORN or MOT. So just stick the chassis plate on a stolen vehicle, possibly pay the penalty for no SORN and away you go.

Geoff, I do apologise that I could be taken to be associating you by implication in misdeeds. Far from it, my own Traveller is now emerging from boxes after six years! It was simply that I get very angry about DVLA's attitude to this issue. I have attempted to alert them to similar cases, to be told that they aren't interested until there is evidence that a crime has been commited.

Mark

[ianmack]

DVLA attitudes leave a lot to be desired in many aspects of their functions. It would be nice to think that their dilatory pace was a result of careful and diligent investigations, but I fear it is just indolence and ineptitude.

[greendefender123]

Yes you can get the get the v5 before putting it on the road. I suggest you do this asoon as you can. I applied for mine paying the £25 but then had to send it back once on the road to register it as historic for the tax exemption. I think the post office sent it back. You can still use the car tho.

[firedrake1942]

Always found the DVLA fairly helpful as a Govt Agency, but like all such bodies it has been very hard hit by the austerity policies in terms of funding and staff reductions. You get what you pay for I suppose (or what you voted for!).

I agree though that the focus on 'ringing' cars has rather gone off the boil. I bet if someone put a new style V5 up for sale, they would act (?) It should be no different with old style log books which give the car thief and 'ringer' the basic material to change the identity of a stolen classic via V5 application as a barn find etc. The availability of reproduction chassis plates, whilst welcome to those restoring cars makes the current system more open to abuse.

That said, when someone tries genuinely to register a car which has been rescued but lacks some documentation or provenance, as this and other fora can attest, it is not as simple as people assume.

[Mark Wilson]

The one I provided a link to was a blue V5, sold with a chassis plate and a number plate (APW 764J) attached to part of a traveller rear door. Last change of keeper in 1983. From what I've read, but have no direct experience of, it will be a doddle for the new "owner" of this identity to stick the plates on a stolen or questionable vehicle and get a new V5C. And soon not even an MOT.......

[firedrake1942]

Interesting - I couldn't see the doc as the auction had ended. But if the doc was that modern it is of significant concern. That really is only onestep away from a thoroughly rung car. If it is easy to ring a classic, all the more incentive to steal one to do so.

[palacebear]

It was simply that I get very angry about DVLA's attitude to this issue. I have attempted to alert them to similar cases, to be told that they aren't interested until there is evidence that a crime has been commited.

The whole issue has, for some time, been about the sale of chassis plates alongside matching V5s, particularly on a well known auction website. One recent incident concerned the sale of chassis plate and V5 from a car allegedly broken-up in 1993. The seller implied he was offering buyers the opportunity to put a 'good' ageless reg.no. on another car. I reported it to the DVLA, getting the same response as Mark Wilson and being told it was a police matter. The police response is always 'It's a matter for the DVLA, not us.' I also reported it by phone to the website's customer service team who admitted the sale breached their T&Cs and said the item would be removed. 10 days later, the item was still listed and sold for £102.

Returning to the op's question. It should be possible to obtain a V5 in your name from the DVLA. Even if the car is currently in pieces, you'd probably want some sort of insurance whilst you work on it, even if its only for fire damage or similar. That said it would need to be registered to you in case you needed to claim.