Hello All,
I hope you will bear with me as I am a bit of an interloper and not a Viva owner. I've joined because I'm hoping that one of the members here might have some knowledge/memory of Silver Line Motors, which was a/the Vauxhall/Bedford dealership in Welwyn Garden City in the 1960s. The reason for my interest is that Silver Line Motors registered my brand new Mark 2 Jaguar 3.4 in October 1966 (it left the factory in April that year for the distributor, Henlys). I have a pretty full history of the car except for anything about the first owner other than his/her name - G Mustoe (that's according to Jaguar's own records). I had originally thought that he/she might have been a Director or senior employee of Silver Line Motors, or of its parent company, the Welwyn Motor Company. However, today I found out that as well as registering my Jaguar during the week of 3 October 1966, at least one other Jaguar, a blue 2.4 Mark 2, was registered by Silver Line Motors along with, as you would expect, numerous HA Vivas. According to the DVLA, some of these cars still exist, or at least have not been recorded as scrapped. All of them were registered in the series SNK800D - SNK820D. So apart from the unlikely possibility of finding out any more about the original owner; my new question is whether anyone can shed any light on why Silver Line Motors were registering Jags as well as the Vivas? It's relevant to point out that Welwyn had a dedicated Jaguar dealer at the time, Denis Barley & Son. In case it is of interest, I have attached a 1964 advert for the HA by Silver Line Motors which I found recently. Thanks in advance for anything anyone might be able to tell me!