MOT Exemption

[irmscher]

Steve the guy at the village mot station near me has a ££££££ head on

[drivewasher]

I did it for my sons business, mind you during my entrance exam a picture message of my P45 filled in and txt "you'd better pass cos I dont want to be giving you this, sort of spured me on lol...

Take a peek here http://www.ashcroftsminitravel.co.uk/index.html

and here http://www.amt-tyres.co.uk/

[irmscher]

The Empire is getting bigger Steve and a lovey spotless workshop like the new ramp bet that was a few quid

[Neil MG]

Seems there may be some confusion between the current annual test and road-worthiness. Of course there is a very strong and direct link, but just count the number of posts on here about brakes, suspension, steering, lights and seatbelts where road legal cars are not safe to be driven. Whether a car requires an MOT or not has no relation to the law regarding use. It is illegal to drive a car that is unsafe. The Police can and do stop motorists to check. If anything, there will be more older cars pulled up for inspection in the future, which I believe is a good thing. Accidents caused by unsafe vehicles do and will continue to lead to prosecution.

Certainly the current MOT goes a long way towards encouraging classic owners to maintain their cars. However, I believe that most pre 1960 cars are highly maintained and driven both sparingly and with great care.

The Morris Minor is an exception in the fact that it is a cheap and readily available as a pre 1960 car. As we see from the forum it is common for them to be driven without being maintained or maintained poorly (to be polite!). Also, due to the low insurance costs they are also driven by a much greater proportion of high risk drivers (no offence intended). It might therefore follow that the MOT is more relevant here.

What's my point? Removing the MOT for older cars makes perfect sense. Very few would argue that the present test format is relevant to pre 1905 cars. Pre 1930, pre war or pre 1960; there has to be a cut off date. The Morris Minor was a relatively very advanced car in 1960 with another ten years of competitive sales. If the cut off were 1948 or even 1953 it would perhaps make more sense. Apart from the Morris Minor there are not many cars more than 52 years old used as everyday transport.

It's therefore quite a hot topic on this forum, but I believe that like all the other changes to automotive legislation, it will be soon a forgotten non issue.

[IaininTenbury]

You're probably right about it becoming a forgotten non issue - in the same way as leaded petrol and tax exemption - both things most of us live with and put up with and with little chance of improvement on.
There are other pre 60 cars in common use howver, its not just us. Land Rovers spring to mind as examples of relatively cheap vehicles whos production spans the 1960 date.
(I ran a particularly horrible 1954 Land Rover as a daily driver in the late '90s for quite a few years until common sense said to pull it apart and restore it after having had a minor accident in it soon after I bought it due to the hubs leaking oil onto the brake shoes. It was MOT'd but soem of the things it failed on at times were mind boggling!).

Even well maintained little used cars can have problems. I had a large 1930s saloon in for work a couple of years back - one owner for over 20 years and it had just hanged hands. In being transported one of the tie down straps had damaged a brake pipe on the back axle and in repairing it I found several seeping wheel cylinders and quite a bit of pipe work rusty and fragile. It had scraped through a test each year by being known to be little used and well cared for, but the new owner wanted to use it much more extensively. I'm sure the next test would have picked up the rusty pipe work if we hadn't have had to start looking at it.

Really even the keenest of owners, isn't going to jack up the wheels, and pry the various suspension joints to look for play, or closely look at all the brake pipes and cables or have an assistant sat in it working steering and brakes. You can see so much more when the car is up on a ramp which the average owner will not.

Aside from the more pessimsitic concerns of future segrgation, and restrictions of use for older cars, it still seems an amazingly stupid backwards step to exempt 160,000 motor vehicles, or to even reduce our standards to match other European contries.

Just for the record if this happens I will 'benefit' by saving on four MOT tests a year on cars I have on the road now with potential for several others, but I really hope I don't.

[charlie_morris_minor]

Did someone not say it is 2 years in France ? The Euronuts are always keen to enforce their ideas on us - so why isn't the car MOT and TAX system standardised across ??

because if we standardise with the French then we would need change all our motorways to toll roads

[morrisminorbzh]

because if we standardise with the French then we would need change all our motorways to toll roads[/quote]

Not all motorways are toll roads in France - ie in Brittany we have FREE motorway standard dual carriageways and the A84 motorway from Rennes to Caen is toll-free. Bretons are historically opposed to any toll roads !!! beware any gouvernment that suggests it!!
Don't forget that we don't have road tax here so why not standardise with us for that ??.
However toll charges are a rip-off in France, someone once called it "a licence to print money". The French didn't need Euronuts to invent toll roads - they have their own !!

MOT's are very important - I'd like to see French classic cars tested at least every 2 years not 5.

[robberred1993]

Also as another point, if the bring it in for cars prior to 1960, won't that split Morris Minors into, Motable, and Non- Motable?

[DaisyMayFozz]

I can just see it now......

Heaps of sh!te cruising the roads with 1 brake light working and 3 bald tyres. MOT required Minors values will drop as no one will want then anymore, they all want the MOT exempt cars! people pulling old resto projects out the garage and driving around with no brakes and floors! It will be a nightmare!! Some cars on the road with an MOT are shocking in there own right, I say it is a terrible idea. I would hate to hit a pothole ( instead of thinking about MOT exempt cars, the government should think about the road quality!) and have my spring hanger disintegrate because I did not know how bad it was.

Chris