vauxhallviva.com

The Heritage is to be looked after by a Classics Specialist whilst new home is set up by Vauxhall - more interesting is the bit about Andrew Duerden Vauxhall Archivist

Hi Fred. The Vauxhall Dating certificate/service sounds interesting. Is it something that you have tried? Mike.

I have a dating certificate from Vauxhall for my HPF. Because it was registered on the 13th January, when the jumping VED exemption date came back I was just outside the grace period (7 days) for presuming a car had been manufactured in the previous year. The dating certificate from Vauxhall allowed the DVLA to add "date of manufacture" to the V5C and got it exempt a little earlier than the registration date would have done.

I always mention at this point that, from mid-1976 (I think, or perhaps 1977), the cars had to be declared new at first registration, so if you then go back and get the DVLA to accept that a car registered in, say, 1979 was actually made in 1978, you run the risk of getting a different registration to match the different year. I have a letter from Practical Classics where someone had lost their reg, but more recently a DSG member has done the same with his HSR and had no trouble with the plate. Mine was prior to that, so I had no trouble either.

Note that the dating certificate only has the month and year, or at least it did when I got mine. The records might be there to figure out exactly what day it was built, but as I understand it they're not in any filed order, just in piles of boxes. I asked them once if they could let me know what options my car was built with (if any) so I could try to get a new SPI plate, but they could not.

ECoupe wrote:Hi Fred. The Vauxhall Dating certificate/service sounds interesting. Is it something that you have tried? Mike.

And here I thought it was an online service to match me with the perfect car.

Contact Andrew Duerden at the Vauxhall Heritage Centre by email - vauxhall.heritage@btinternet.com - for a vehicle build date certificate.

Andrew will need front and rear three quarter images of the car and a picture of the vehicle chassis number in jpg format to verify the car's existence. An £18 fee is payable for the certificate.

Andrew will provide further details.

Thanks for that Colin - very useful information