Question re old irish reg cars

AÆ

Was thinking..

I think one of the more classic features of any old classic car in Ireland is when it has an old irish reg. Just gives it that more of an alure..

So..Lets say u found a old merc wreck in ireland...completely rusted thru and no hope of any cost effective salvage....and u found the exact year in the uk and u wanted to import the uk car and give it the irish reg.

My quetion is ...

1) do many folks just swap the reg plate...i figure that is entirely illegal.

2) how could u swap the reg whilst making it completely legal...is the irish reg 'attached' to the chassis number so u would have to strip entirely both cars to make it legit.

and 3)...would that make irish registered old cars somewhat valuable..even if the are rusted in a farmers field....purely for the irish reg plate

thanks...

Paddy001

It is being done but I'm pretty sure there's no way to do it legally. If you bring in a Uk car now you can have a year plate eg 77 D xxx or you can have ZV and a number, but ZV numbers are so high now it will be more likely a phone number after the ZV! IMO this doesn't look nice at all

Wishbone Ash

Paddy001 wrote: »

you can have a year plate eg 77 D xxx or you can have ZV and a number

......only if it's more than 30 years old.

If you were to import a 1980 car now , it would have to have 80 D 123 type format. (....with the option to revert to ZV when it becomes 30 years old).

Bitten & Hisses

I want to start this by stating that I am not looking for loopholes and am not looking to fool anyone, but I am curious, like the OP.
You often hear of people "re-shelling" a car. Just wondering how much of the original car must go into the new shell to legally transfer across the reg plate? I understand that the reg number stays with the chassis of the car, but consider the following hypothetical scenario: You have a desirable car, e.g. an RS2000 Escort on original Irish plates, which you wrap around a tree. The shell is destroyed, but you can take engine, gearbox, rear axle, interior out and put them into a tidy shell you acquired from Poland. Can you legally put the old Irish plates on this new, rebuilt car?
Plus, if the registration stays with the chassis, does that mean you can't re-use the identity if you reshell a monocoque?
As I understand, in the UK you can go for a Q-plate for a rebuilt car, but there's no such facility here?
One reason I ask is that I recently saw a car competing in the Rally of the Lakes, which used to belong to my brother as a road car. Now, I seriously doubt that the actual shell is the car he used to drive around in, but the car bears the reg of his old one.

AÆ

thanks guys....i had assumed that u could only get the ZV if it was originally an irish car unwise it would have to be say 73-D-97987.......

all cleared up now...:pac:

Paddy001

Wishbone Ash wrote: »

......only if it's more than 30 years old.

If you were to import a 1980 car now , it would have to have 80 D 123 type format. (....with the option to revert to ZV when it becomes 30 years old).

Ya but I left that out since he's talking about stuff rusted in a farmers yard it would be that old anyway, and we are also in the classics forum...

Wishbone Ash

There appears to be an inordinate number of Beetles around with original Irish plates. One has to suspect that some may be imports dressed up!

carchaeologist

Bitten & Hisses wrote: »

One reason I ask is that I recently saw a car competing in the Rally of the Lakes, which used to belong to my brother as a road car. Now, I seriously doubt that the actual shell is the car he used to drive around in, but the car bears the reg of his old one.

Isnt rallying different,as in it doesnt really matter what logbooh/reg number is on the car?Iv seen road escorts numberplates and logbooks used on rally cars a number of times.

trevorbrady

Wishbone Ash wrote: »

There appears to be an inordinate number of Beetles around with original Irish plates. One has to suspect that some may be imports dressed up!

while it's true, there are some really obvious beetles going around that shouldn't by rights have original Irish registration numbers but do anyway.

However, there is an inordinate amount of bugs going around because there was an inordinate amount of them around in the first place!!!

21,529,464 built between 1938 and 2003 (Wikipedia)

Whosbetter?

Yeah, never a 'bug' fan myself, but each to their own.

I think it's fair to say, though, that a car with an original irish plate is more desirable however.

I dunno how much of a price premium it would have in today's climate.
It might be just be a bit easier to sell.

What does anyone else think?

carchaeologist

The worst thing is,its sometimes hard to spot without further investigation whats original irish and isnt sometimes.And sometimes people dont believe you when you say your car is an original.


To my mind theres five registration types in ireland these days
1-year identifiers (66 D 1234)
2-ZV 4 Digits(ZV1234)
3-ZV 5 Digits (ZV 12345)
4-Original irish numbers (AZA123)
5-Ringers

MercMad

Just my 2c, it has never been possible to legally re-shell a car in Ireland. All shells imported have always been subject to VRT, and therefore re-registered. Obviously it is possible to bring in a shell and keep it in a garage and do as you wish with it but that is the law.

With new cars, even after heavy accident damage dealers were never allowed to order a new shell without paying VRT.

With Beetles and other seperate chassis cars the chassis number remains with the chassis and not the body. I expect there are plenty of imported Beetles and Range Rovers with the reg plates illegally transfered, and plenty of others too.

With Motorsport cars if the shell is badly damaged and therefore replaced usually the chassis number is re-stamped into the donor shell which again is a dubious practice but nobody minds since generally the cars are only ever going to be used on the road to get to and from a stage, and this is not classified as "normal road use"

Anything is possible but very seldom is it legal.

Bitten & Hisses

That's along the lines of what I expected. It's a pity we don't have some sort of system here like the Q-plate for rebuilt cars.

PaulK_CCI

That's exactly the situation as it seems to be in Ireland, MercMad.

With regards to seperate chassis vehicles, there doesn't seem to be any specific legislation in place in Ireland, perhaps because nobody bothered or because it was not seen as a particular problem, so therefore it is a perfectly legal practice to put a newer body shell on an old chassis once the chassis is still intact and not significanly modified.

This is a practice that is also legal in most other European countries, but in order to avoid any excesses, they have put a few restrictions in place in some countries. In Holland for example they use the "2/3 originality" rule: a car must maintain 2/3 of it's original specification/components in order to be legal. (3 segments being engine, body, fuel type). So you can change the body of a 73 Range Rover into a 94 Body shell, but the engine AND fuel type must be maintained. So you can't also convert it into a Diesel or a 3.9. If you want to run the RR on autogas, you can't modfy the body or change the capacity of the engine itself.

With older, valuable cars, it's even more complicated, as there are scenario's where they have found a section of a Bugatti chassis with a couple of loose components, with which they have rebuilt a complete bugatti Type32 for example.... Can that be considered a genuine Bugatti ????