John, every commission plate I have seen lists a year date for emmissions
printed on the plate i.e. (This Vehicle Meets Safety and Emmision
Regulations For Federal Vehicle Standards for 1979), but it also has the
supposed date of manufacture stamped in to it i.e. (April 1979)
So are we all talking about the same date listed on our plates?
Patrick Bowen
-----Original Message-----
From: jonmac [mailto:jonmac@ndirect.co.uk]
Sent: Tuesday, August 10, 1999 6:21 PM
To: Doug Mitchell; Spitfire Mailing List
Subject: Re: Commision Number Plates
On Aug 11, Doug Mitchell wrote:
>Spitted Ones and John,
>After discussions here the last few days about commission
>numbers and build dates, I have started wondering whether
>or not the date stamped on the plate has any correlation
>to the real build date.
>Some examples:
>My Spit is FM4879U and is stamped April 1973.
>Walt Fogle's Spit is FM4723U and is stamped April 1973.
>Steve Yemo's Spit is FM11191U and is stamped April 1973.
>Steve's TR250 is 6826L and is stamped April 1968.
>Did BL just pre-stamp a number of plates with April 19XX
>and throw them on the car? Was there some reason for BL
>to have done this? Safety/emission/? certifications?
>I know, I know, I should get the build certificate from
>Gaydon, but that would only answer the question on my
>car.
>Inquiring minds want to know.
Doug,
In all honesty, I can't answer your query. I wish I could. The following is
a considered opinion and it would have to be borne out by shelling out 40
bucks to validate the actual build date on a BMIHT Certificate. Currently, I
think the date stamp (which I'd forgotten was on the commission plate)
probably relates to the prevailing emission/safety/whatever legislation that
was in place at the time the car was made. I think its important to point
out that at the time, most UK manufacturers were more than reluctant to
state an actual production date on their cars. This is not because they
wanted to withold that info but they weren't sure and obviously couldn't be
sure when that car would eventually be sold. I think Andy Mace wrote
something a day or so back about certain cars being sold as or passed off as
"a 1970 model" when in fact it had been sitting in stock either in the UK or
the target market. Obviously that was something way beyond the manufacturers
control and we were all very well aware of a certain preclivity (shall we
say) for disgruntled customers in the US in the US to sue for damages if
they felt they had been sold an out of date vehicle. The concern was mainly
to protect the importer which in Standard Triumph's case was a wholly owned
subsidiary company. Casting my mind back, I seem to recall (though I can't
copper bottom guarantee it) that Federal Regs were outlined in the early
part of each year and were confirmed at the end of June of the same year to
ensure the following year's model fully met Federal standards. As a result,
any car with, say an April 73 comm plate would probably EITHER confirm the
car was built to the spec UP TO the end of June 73 or it met specs effective
Jan 1, 1974. In this latter regard it wouldn't really matter when the car
was built in 1973 and this tends to suggest the numerical variance between
Walt Fogle's and Steve Yemo's Spitfire. There's no way that STI would have
been able to build 6468 US Spec Spitfires in one month. Dammit, I don't
think they were capable of building that number of ALL cars for ALL markets
in just one month.
Best way to resolve this dilemma is for all of you to request a BMIHT Cert
!!!!
Hope this helps - sorry I can't be more specific. Maybe Joe Curry can offer
an alternative explanation?
Cheers
John
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