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MG MG Y Type - 'First Registration'

Having just submitted my basketcase YT 4127 for '"Y"s on Parade' I was unable to provide "Date of First Registration" as that information is not normally transmitted with the car in the US. Yet I notice that all the other US cars shown do have this information. US owners: how did you determine this? Thanks in advance!
Allen Bachelder

Allen

Thanks for putting your YT up on the Website; we are keen to reach that MaGic number of 50 by the 14th June, two months after the launch. With regard to dating cars we can date your car quite easily. We have the actual completion dates of YTs from YT1922 to YT3374 and then for some reason subsequent dates are missing. We do know that YTs used the same chassis sequence, as YAs and therefore we know that cars Y2209 – Y4239 were built in 1949, this information is extracted from Appendix 3 of John Lawson’s book. Given your chassis number is 22 cars earlier than the final car built in 1949, it is safe to say that your car was built in December 1949, probably just before Xmas.

With regard to registration this is more difficult, in the UK it is easy as the registration document follows the car for life. In the USA and many European Countries the number plate relates to either the owner or the state or town in which the car is registered. Given that your car was built in December and had to be transported to the USA it is probable that it wasn’t delivered until late Jan/Early Feb 1950. If you look at the Website, Terry O’Brien’s car, 90 cars off the production line after yours was not registered until April 1950. Given that his had to get over to the West Coast, (Vancouver BC) and yours was delivered to the East Coast, I would suggest that your car was united with its first owner in late February or early March 1950. I hope this helps.
David Pelham

David & Allen
Allen's car is according to my calculation 112 before 1 Jan. 1950. Mine was 22. Otherwise I agree with David. Hope Allen gets the car back on the road soon. Looks easy. Terry
Terry O'Brien

Allen & Terry

Sorry about my 'mix up' with Terry's car. The total number of Ys built in 1949 was 2,031. If you take the average per month as 169 cars then 112 before the end of the year would place Allen's car in early December.

Good luck with the restoration. David.



David Pelham

Obviously there appears to be much data re the YB & YT manufacture dates, but can anyone help accurately date Y2313? The J Lawson book suggests early 1949 for first registration, and I was verbally told the car was manufactured right at the end of 1948, but sadly there are no documents to support this. DVLC have issued new papers with the info stated, and we know the present plates were registered in Bath, but it also states this is only probable info, not specific. I'm awaiting the DVLC tracer on past owners / registration documents, so I may find out anyway eventually, but as the Y Register team seem to have their finger on most pulses I'm hoping you can help! Are there other routes for tracing such data, preferably by the chassis number?
Ken Jones

Hi Ken

The short answer, as I am sure you are aware, is it is very difficult to date these cars as the records simply do not exist. We can only go by approximation.

As you will be aware, so close to the end of the War, it was "export or die", equally on the home market, steel was so scarce there were not the stock pile of cars there are today. If your car has never been out of the UK and you have the date of first registration, as I believe you do, the answer has to be that the production was more than probably not less than one month before, or two at the outside.

I am not sure if this accords with what John Lawson has to say, but it certainly holds water as a theory. I will be pleased to see your comments, and others, as this is not strictly my field of expertise.

Paul
Paul Barrow

Sent him a copy of the MG Ledger Records as far as I have them.

Neil.
Neil Cairns

Paul's comment about the link between manufacturing date and registration date is borne out by my car (Y6814): registered in mid-May 1951, it was probably built in April.... how do I know this? Because the Lucas control box and dynamo are original and are dated March 51 (Lucas dated most of their finished components apparently - check on the base of the control box, on the surface facing upwards).

Clearly the supply chain was still tight six years after the end of the war, and for a car that was no longer leading-edge in its design. "Sales" meant something entirely different in those far-off days, more akin to rationing.
Tim Griggs

Dear Paul & Co,

Just an update on the dating of Y2313.... sadly, the tracing of past history via DVLC has proven a total waste of space, simply confirming the previous owner and the date the vehicle was re registered after being saved from a farmyard, ie 1983, so the factual date of manufacture and first register still remains something of a mystery. The Jan 1949 mentioned previously is still just an approximation, though Swansea don't disagree with it and neither does the Lawson book. The present AGL730 reg number is however now likely to be a red herring and only added at the point of re register (despite the previous owner insisting it was original). If it WAS original, I had hoped the Swansea tracec would have returned with more detailed info on past owners. Not to worry... maybe one day they may come to the surface.

Take care all,

Ken
Ken Jones

Hi all
When I was overhauling chassis and mechanical components on YT3477 I found dates stamped into the main spring leaves (6/49)and same on the starter and generator, and 7/49 on the regulatorbox and fuel pump.
Also rather neat to pull out the dash panel and find the car number chalked on the back. I found that before I found the actual chassis number.
In NSW the registering authorities claim that they can only supply reo details for last 7 years at best. The police on the other hand seem to have access to older information somehow.
bye now,
Geoff

geoff meller

Ken, DVLC records at Swansea only go back to about 1970 when the DVLA took over from all the local offices. In the abscence of any better information, you need to find out where AGL730 was registered (I suspect that GL is SW London) and whether the records still exist - a few are still available, many have been destroyed. There are books available that tell you the districts and whether the records still exist.
dan

Thank you both for your comments, the chalk marks will be fascinating to find if they're still there, and I'll be in the garage with my torch looking at the components mentioned tomorrow!
Re the area of registration Dan, the AGL reg number is known to be from the Bath area in Somerset... confirmed by numerous friends who still live in the area. Can you suggest who I should contact re these 'old records' as I haven't a clue where to start? How & where were vehicles registered prior to the 1970's?
The confusing thing re the DVLA report mentioned is that they actually state on one page,in black & white, that the car was manufactured on the 30th December 1948, yet they also state in the same document that the only records shown for the vehicle commence in 1983? I'm taking this early date as being gospel now, but would desperately like to know the details of previous owners for obvious reasons. The chassis number still seems the most concrete way of tracing things as the reg number may have been changed for all I know.
Oh well, the hunt now starts in real earnest.... thanks again for your time and will welcome your further comments & advice.
Kindest regards, Ken.
Ken Jones

Ken, I was making a guess at provenance as there are a lot of G* "numbers" from Wimbledon. I grew up in Bath, but don't remember seeing many GL cars around there (not that this is very definitive). I would guess you could try the county records office or Bath library.

Your situation with DVLA records going back to 1983, I think, is due to the car being off the road between the time that the recors were centralised and then. My understanding is that at the time cars had to be re-registered with DVLA, and there was no wholesale transfer of records from regional offices. The reason that they have no information is because no-one told them about it.

It's only recently that they've started to track down lost numbers (one of the purposes of the off-road notification) as they've realised that they can get money for them.
dan

Cheers Dan, will make some phone calls tomorrow to the places suggested. It's got to be worth a go. I'm not a Bath person (Brummie by birth) so I can only be guided through friends & people like yourself... showed photo of AGL730 to an 'old' mate (senior in years) who is Bath born & bred, and he said immediately 'that's a Bath reg!'... no question....
Re the gap in time... the car had been laid up for around 20 years on a farm before being purchased in '83 by the chap I bought it off last year.... it then took him 18 years before the restoration was completed (an hour or two at weekends in between his day job, which just happens to have been restoring old motors for customers, mainly MG Y Types!). As there were no documents available when he purchased it, he got the Swansea Inspector crew in to re register her (original AGL number plates still intact and now in the garage for keepsakes), hence the history starting from 1983. A long time off the road... that's 38 years out of the 53 years of age, totally motionless! Sadly he doesn't know who he purchased it off (odd?) so I'm now working blind.
Can I just say thank you for taking the trouble to write as you have.... the MG crew really are a great bunch. Will keep you posted on my progress. Cheers again, Ken.

Ken Jones

I am delighted that my initial question has sparked such a lively and intersting discussion. In the midst of this, David Pelham and David Lawrence have discovered that my 4127 is one of two missing cars on the factory ledger. I will certainly follow the advice of Geoff Meller and Tim Griggs: look for dates on control box, dynamo, starter, fuel pump, and leaf springs. Of course any of these components might have been replaced somewhere along the line, but it seems quite unlikely that they all would have been replaced with older components, leading to a fairly safe conclusion that the car is no older than the earliest date found. Of couse that will only corroborate David's estimate (above) that the car was manufactured in early December 1949.

My thanks to all who have contributed to this discussion!
Allen Bachelder

For those in the UK, who are interested in confirming origins of original registration marks, there is a marvellous little book entitled "Motor Vehicle Registration Marks of the British Isles", compiled by Thomas N Bowden. ISBN O-906025-65-6. As far as I know it is still available and cost about £4 some 3 years ago.
It confirms that GL was a Bath C.B.C. registration pre 1974 and was then re-allocated to Truro! Cheers
Keith D Herkes

My Y Registered in May 1947 chassis 0330 has Number GL 9899 and was first registered in Bath. So there. Slater Reynolds
Slater reynolds

Nice one Slater! Everything points to Y2313 being Bath registered now. Tried the Library & Register offices at Bath, as suggested, without success... infact they both simply suggested contacting the MGCC!!! I now believe the 30/12/1948 to be the factual date of manufacture, but the registration date will probably remain a mystery... unless, of course, original owners can be traced??? One day...

Thanks to everyone once again,

Ken
Ken Jones

On the subject of dating Y's, you are correct in the assumtion that looking at the Lucas items is a good way to do this. In fact in my experience with Y's in Australia and knowing actual delivery dates of some from dealer records it is of note that the Lucas accessories were sometimes only a month or two older than the delivery date of the vehicle. This is probably because MG did not want to hold vast amounts of Lucas stock. In other words, it seems to follow that you would not find a 1947 headlamp on a 1949 car. All my Lucas stuff on my YT was dated no more than 6 months apart and all was 1949.

By the way, for those with New South Wales cars. A contact of mine here, Jeff Newey who has most of the delivery records for Sydney. With Alf Luckman's well known YA here, not only was I able to find out which ship in arrived on, which dealer it was sold through, to whom and on what date it was sold, but unbelievably Jeff Newey had photo's in his possesion of Alf Car being RACED by the MG sales team race team (Caddick was the surname) complete with round numbers on the doors. Alf had wondered why his car (which was a basket case before the concours resto) had all sorts of modifications to shocks and an anti swaybar fitted.
Jeff's number is 02 4967-1454
Jeremy

This thread was discussed between 15/05/2002 and 30/08/2002

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