The BJ8 registry DOES store pictures of each car when available. It also
provides an alternate place to preserve copies of original documentation
such as bills of sale, BMIHT certificates, etc., when the owners will
provide them. I wish the original owner of my BJ8 had stored a copy of the
documentation for my car someplace else because the originals were all lost
in a house fire.
Yes, people move and change e-mail addresses. Any e-mail address more than
a year old is probably no longer valid, in my experience. The registries
depend on the owners to keep the info updated as it changes. However, even
if the contact information recorded for an owner in the registry is
outdated, it still will provide some starting point for a later owner to use
in trying to track down a previous owner. For that reason, the BJ8 registry
retains all contact information available on a car's owners, even when it
changes. Determining service history on an individual car can be done if
and when you get in touch with the previous owners.
For most states in the USA, it is no longer possible to obtain previous
owner info from the DMV. Not only have the DMVs purged their older records
(with some few states being the exception), most will not provide owners
names and addresses anyway due to the 1994 Federal Driver's Privacy
Protection Act. Before this took place, I was able to get a list of
previous (6) owners for my car and got in touch with each one. I got old
pictures from the '60s and '70s from them. The point is, in the absence of
any other sources for tracing previous owners, the registries are the best
resource but they require cooperation and support of the owners themselves
to make it work.
Steve Byers
HBJ8L/36666
BJ8 Registry
Havelock, NC USA
------------------------
The registry is a great starting point, and I'm all for it. But people
move,
change email addresses, etc. It doesn't store pictures or record service
history.
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