Off Topic Triumph Mayflower

Good day to you all, as a brand new member of the forum I'd love to start with a question or two...however, I'll offer an introduction by way of forum etiquette and respect for all of your time. I have been a car guy most of my life (started with my first VW at 15) and even though I may be newcomer to the British car world, I'm no stranger to foreign machines. Old Volvo 122's, multiple Fiat's, several Renault's, dozens of Volkswagens...1971 Mercedes 280se 4.5, a 1958 Simca Aronde Grand Large and an NSU Prinz are among the many imported vehicles I've owned and worked on over the years.
However, I now find myself at a bit of a loss. You see, I recently purchased this (presumably-no title) 1949 or 1950 Triumph Mayflower. It is right-hand drive, a bit rusty around the bottom (as I've heard "they all are") but very straight and complete. The car even has all 5 matching original rims and beauty rings and came with its original 1950's British license plates...

So Here is my first series of questions:

How do the British handle license plates? Do they stay with the car or would they be switched from car to car by one owner...(?) could a certain plate number be reissued by the government to other parties after a car has expired?

And the second question:

I believe that I may have ended up with the EXACT Mayflower that was road tested by Triumph in the initial stages of its release...or so it would seem. Would that connection and matching license set to support that claim, lend any intrigue to potential buyers of this strange little bird?

I'm not certain how to attach pictures yet, but I'll work on that.

Thank you for your help in advance.

It is my understanding that in the UK numbers stay with the vehicle in normal circumstances so having the same number shown, say, in a period photo would certainly suggest that it is the same car.

I do not think numbers get re-used per se but there is a scheme by which rare or early numbers (possibly called 'cherished numbers') get sold and bought for use on collector cars. I know of this only because I have seen ads for these in British car magazines.

The plates themselves are made up privately and so, in theory, anyone could make any plate though I think that is unlikely what you are looking at.

BTW - the numbers and letters on the plate are systematic - as I recall they indicate where the car was first registered and possibly the year.

In any case, as you suspect it would be worth your while to get the whole story and document any history this Mayflower may have as a factory car.

Look forward to seeing photos of the car.

We'd love to see photos! If I were you, I'd get in touch with the Triumph Mayflower Club in the UK: https://www.triumphmayflowerclub.com/

BTW - I am sure there are better instructions for posting photos here but what I do is get the photo somewhere on the web (Photobucket in my case) then 'copy' the photo (it's URL). Once in the message you click on the icon that looks sort of like a framed picture and it will give you a menu that includes posting from a URL. I paste my copied photo into that and also uncheck the box that says 'Retrieve remote file and reference locally' if I want to pic to show in the message rather than as a thumbnail.

Or you can just use commands with your photo URL pasted between them.

Welcome aboard!

Hope you get the photo thing figured out.
would like to see your progress!

Best regards,

Guy

GTP1960 said:

Welcome aboard!

Hope you get the photo thing figured out.
would like to see your progress!

Best regards,

Guy

Click to expand...

Yes, I'm working on it...
Thank you all so very much. It would seem, at this early point in the conversation, that I do, in fact, posses the exact Triumph Mayflower that was flogged for 5000 miles across Europe during early production testing. I've emailed the Mayflower Club in England and will be hoping to hear back soon with any other tidbits. I'll be sure to pass them on.

Now...on to the pictures...

I think that might work?

Worked just fine, just have to click on a link. Thanks and she will take some work. The grill is close or the same as the Roadster.

Wayne

This is a page from the original road test that got my questions started...

https://instagram.com/p/BGDoxc0P3R8/

RHDMayflower said:

This is a page from the original road test that got my questions started...

https://instagram.com/p/BGDoxc0P3R8/

Click to expand...

I'm not an expert on British registrations, but from what little I do know, I find it very unlikely that yours is not the car in the picture. It would be interesting to see the rest of the article. Welcome to the forum.
Tom

I worked on one of those way back in the day. Looked like a Rolls seen through the wrong end of a telescope. Good luck with the project.

GTP1960 said:

Welcome aboard!

Hope you get the photo thing figured out.
would like to see your progress!

Best regards,

Guy

Click to expand...

If anybody is looking for a Mayflower in similar conditions to the one above, we have one for sale in Los Angeles, California.

https://losangeles.craigslist.org/lgb/pts/d/1949-triumph-mayflower-1200t/6627879125.html

FWIW, there was a really beat up Mayflower up here in BC that was brought back to life about ten years ago. Might be worth contacting the owner(s) to see what they had to do ( and how they did it). It looked magnificent.

Hi All. I can help on the UK registrations. All vehicles had to be regsitered since 1903. It started as two letter and two number and then increased to 3 and 4 numbers. In the 1940s it became three letters and three numbers. 1963 was a key year as we went to the suffix system, e.g. ABC 123D, where D represented a year (A was 1963, B 1964 etc.), in 1983 that became the prefix system e.g. D123 ABC where D still represented the year. in 2001 we changed to AB12 CDE where the numbers represent the year. Note that the year was from August 1 each year, so an A suffix was from August 1963 to July 1964, there could be 1, 2 or 3 digits before the 2001 system Before 1963 plates were "ageless"

For registrations up to the 1990s, two of the letters represent the area in which the car was registered. For suffix and prefix numbers it is the second and third letters, in this case WK. I've looked it up and WK was........Coventry, which is where the factory was (Coventry and Birmingham were the nearest we had to Detroit after the war).

Since 1991 the government has allowed numbers to be purchased, and these are what is known as cherished plates. The plates must be one of the standard formats, and you cannot put a plate on a car that is older than the plate would signify - so you cannot, for example, put a 2000 year plate on a car that was built before 2000 (thereby making it look newer). The DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licencing Authority) hold a list of available numbers and you can buy them direct, or via dealers. If you have a number plate on a car, you cannot transfer it from the car unless it has an MOT (annual Ministry of transport safety check all cars have to go though) although there are ways around it. If you write the car off the plate goes back to the government. Once you've bought a plate it is "on retention" and you have up to 5 years to assign it to a car

Ageless plates are the most valuable, alongside those plates that could spell something - there is a chap with PEN 1S on his car, he's probably called Dick something........

The only other point is that a lot of manufacturers had a block of numbers assigned to them that they could use, and they could move them around provided they updated the goverment as to which plate was on which car. This system was for show and demonstrator cars, however if a car was sold with a plate on it there was no system at the time to transfer a plate without the car being written off (destroyed).

The Mayflower doens't look to have run anytime recently, and the plate looks physically old. I would say, given the Coventry number, there is a high probability the car and plate are both original.
Hope this helps

J