Hi, Guys
At the risk of being a pain in the proverbial, I thought I'd relay this
situation 'unofficially' to the lists for those of you yet to apply for
Heritage Certificates.
This week, I've been manning the phones in the Archive section owing to
staff absences and one thing has become very clear.
Some people, fortunately not many - when applying for a Certificate,
provide just a chassis number. Sure, this is the detail we
need to start a trace - but sometimes it appears we're only getting part of
a number. In this case, I'm referring to the suffix letters
on Triumph chassis plates. Frankly, it's causing problems and occasionally,
it precipitates an irate phone call or a stuffy letter from the
vehicle owner.
How does this come about?
Some people applying for Certs have a car that was a rebuild by a previous
owner which owner then decided to undertake some mods of his/her own - like
not refitting an overdrive or changing the steering position. All we can
do, is to provide you with the data from production records when the car
was new and we are particularly careful how this info is recorded on the
Cert we issue.
What is rather distressing is that we receive letters and calls from people
challenging the authenticity of the info we provide because someone has
effected a change in the vehicle spec (transmission, steering position,
body or trim colour) at a later date. Naturally, we have no knowledge of
this and we are just as unable as the current owner to explain why or when
this happened.
All I would say is that when you submit us your details, nothing is too
unimportant to help us to help you in terms of the info you can provide. I
know that chassis, engine and body numbers are key to research but its not
our fault if someone switches bodies and chassis, paints everything a
different colour and then 'passes the car off' as a wholly rebuilt original
example.
In summary, if you do receive a certificate that doesn't tally with your
car, its a pretty safe bet that at some stage in the past (after said
vehicle left Coventry or Abingdon) that someone has interfered with it. It
seems a lot of people don't appreciate this.
Only today, I had to deal with a woman who couldn't understand why we
didn't know what had happened to her now fully restored Healey 3000 which
she thought was first made and first licenced in 1965. In fact it was
originally made in 1961 (according to the chassis number) the gearbox came
from something else and the axle with rear disc brakes was obviously a
hybrid. Of course, in her view she was right, BMIHT was wrong and what she
wanted to know was WHY we couldn't sort it all out for her.
John Macartney
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