Registration origins

[jagnut66]

Hi,
Sally, my 1954 Clarendon Grey 4 door (still awaiting paint) has a registration mark of 'GSJ', however I find myself unable to discern a definitive answer, from my book of UK registration marks, as to where this originates.
The best that I can decipher is that it may originate from Perth but I thought that the letters that designated a plates origins were the last two letters, in this case 'SJ', not the first two (GS)?
I base this in part on the fact that a car I once owned in Reading had the letters 'NRX', the 'RX' being the letters for Reading from 1974 onwards.
Can someone on here tell me where my plate (/ car) originates from?
Thanks and best wishes,
Mike.

[myoldjalopy]

It is, indeed, the last two letters and SJ = Glasgow.

[simmitc]

SJ are the correct letters to check. From 1904 to 1963 they were issued by the County Council of Bute. See "A History of Motor Vehicle Registration in the United Kingdom" by L. H. Newall.

The later book "Motor Vehicle Registration Numbers of Great Britain 1963-1974" by Jonathan Del Mar also states Bude CC for the later years.

[ManyMinors]

However, the car may well never have been anywhere even close to that area as GSJ is one of the many DVLA "age related" issues given out as re-registrations - usually after the sale or transfer of the original registration number. You see a lot of SJ, SV and SU registration numbers on old cars. Most were issued in the 1990s.

[simmitc]

Good point. Mike, you need to get a Heritage Certificate which will tell you the dealer to which the car was sent, and that will narrow down whether Bude is the correct area. You can also ask the DVLA for a history of the registration to see whether it was changed, and reveal the original number if applicable. This is not the same a list of previous keepers that they will not supply.

[myoldjalopy]

Can't possibly be Bude! It only has a town council. No "Bude County Council" ever existed.

[jagnut66]

I think he meant Bute, which is also in Scotland.
I have a copy of -- long title, bear with me -- A history of motor vehicle registration in the United Kingdom (Third edition) by L. H. Newall --
Not our Ray this time....... Or is it?.........
Anyway, with the pointer to Scotland in 'myoldjalopy's' post above, I had a further search in the Scottish section of the book and under the sub heading of 'County Council of Bute' I found the 'SJ' mark, which was current for the area when my car was registered in 1954.

Sadly, you may be right and it could have been robbed of it's original plate.
I will have to find out which form I need to fill in with the DVLA to request a registration history.
Best wishes,
Mike.

[geoberni]

Mike
Based on my own experience with Basil, it should be easy to tell if 'Sally' carries an Age Related Registration.

You don't even need to have a book...
A quick look at Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_r ... 32_to_1963
reveals that the letters SJ were allocated to Bute (1903–74).

The old allocation system up to the 1960s resulted in high population centres running out of letters while far smaller county councils had hundreds unallocated.
Typically many of these small, low population, counties were in Scotland.
Basil's registration, BSL, would have been Clackmannanshire (1903–74)

Basil's V5C at the bottom of the front page, Section 3 'Special notes (these notes cannot be removed)' reads
1. NON-TRANSFERABLE REGISTRATION MARK

As Simon says, DVLA should be happy to tell you if the car had changed registrations.
I know that Basil started as PKV708, then in 1991 that was transferred and he was allocated AFE996A, before getting his current 'age related' in 1999.
PKV708 is now on a 2003 Renault.

[philipkearney]

IMG_0024.JPG (1.65 MiB) Viewed 1745 times

I'm pretty sure that is a later allocated number. Small areas like Bute never got through a lot of numbers. The above photo from Glass's guide 1959 shows that they had only got to SJ2038 by 1959. They hadn't even got to ASJ numbers let alone GSJxxx numbers. In ten years, they had only registered just over 2000 vehicles !

[Dusty56]

Usually (but not always) if the V5C states non transferable registration mark, it isn't the original number.

[jagnut66]

It does state 'non transferable registration mark', so a replacement plate then.
I have completed and posted DVLA form V888, so it will be interesting to see what they come back with.
A pity she's been stripped of her original identity.......
My travellers reg appears to be original. Shame there's no way of requesting the DVLA make it non transferable....
Best wishes,
Mike.

[Chief]

If you have any old MOT certificates you might be able to look back through them and see when the registration changed and see what it used to be, that's how I found out mine had been changed (and later on, bought it back)

[jagnut66]

and later on, bought it back

I'll have a look but I don't recall getting much history with Sally. She was a cheap car by Series 2 standards and wanted allot doing to her but I'm happy she is on the road to being saved, which given the state she was in at the back end, may well not have happened.
How did you find out that your original number was for sale? Just randomly trawling the reg transfer sites?
Best wishes,
Mike.

[Chief]

One birthday I was asked what I wanted and jokingly said my Morris Minors' original number plate.
So for fun we searched for it (google most likely), and up it came for sale (what are the odds!)

In case you're wondering, no, I wasn't given it as a present as it was over £1000, which was a tad expensive.

Though I did buy it for myself because how often do you get the chance to re-unite the car with its' original plate (of course, I was then flat broke)

[jagnut66]

You were lucky, my first Minors plate was 'lifted' and put on some tasteless Japanese junk, it was RVV 119 but got assigned an 'A' plate, as it was a 1963 car.
Given how prices for plates have escalated (and I doubt they'll be affected by the cost of living crisis), even if I found it had become available I wouldn't expect that I could justify the silly price it would command nowadays.
Don't get me wrong, £1000+ wasn't cheap but they will have doubled and some in between then and now.
Though it will be interesting to see what it was.
When I find out I'll post it up.

By the way, does this mean that the original plate, now back where it belongs, namely on your Moggy, is non-transferable?
Best wishes,
Mike.

[Chief]

It was probably well over a decade ago now so I'm sure you're right that prices have sky rocketed, but back then some plates were alot cheaper than others, even historic ones.

Basically the price was being set by the owner so some were sensible (£100-300) and then it went up, up, up (to the multi-thousands). The site (click4reg) has or at least had a similar 'Make Offer' feature to eBay in that it had automatic rejection if the amount was too low.

Unlike eBay you could do as many offers as you wanted, so I went up the numbers a few pounds at a time to find the lowest it would accept (and then went down the numbers to get it to the exact £) - then the seller was contacted by the click4reg team who did all the transaction stuff, they declined the offer and the team got back to me with the lowest the seller would accept (which was much higher than the minium they'd allowed for the make offer ).

Another downside was that after the transfer, for several years, many sites (and breakdown/insurance companies) were using out of date databases so would tell me I had a range rover.

I'm pretty sure it's still transferable because of it being a historic plate. I see the plate it had for a few decades (mine got a B plate, '63 car registered in '64 ) is no longer valid so I guess some plates get scrapped by the DVLA automatically.

[jagnut66]

Hi,
Today I received my reply from the DVLA.
She was originally MED 559 and it looks like a keeper in Northwich owned her until around 1978.
From the data they have let me have it appears that the original registration was lifted around 2019 by someone in Romford, presumably just before they sold her to the guy in South Croydon, whom I bought her off.
The odd thing is that it doesn't appear on the DVLA database as assigned to any vehicle, they seem to have no record of it??
I'm left wondering, does this mean it's on retention but not assigned by the person in Romford or that it might be available?
I wonder if the DVLA will tell me if it's on retention or not?
Best wishes,
Mike.

[myoldjalopy]

Is there any way in which you can tell whether the vehicle's registration number has ever been changed?

[philipkearney]

If it's on retention, then it doesn't show up when you check the database. I'd expect it has been transferred off the car and put straight on to retention. A quick check on the main reg plate websites doesn't turn it up as being for sale, so likely someone has it on retention for now.

[jagnut66]

I had a look out of curiosity, MED 429 is the closest I could find and priced at £4153, which I can then assume is about what I'd have to pay to get Sally's original registration back
I wish they'd never allowed plates to be transferable, then we wouldn't have this issue.
Best wishes,
Mike.