Some history

[catfood]

In the 70s all car registration data was centralised in the UK. I have had the DVLA trace the history of my car but their records only went back to 1970. I was chatting to a Healey owner at Silverstone who told me that the original registration information for Warwick registered cars (which mine is) was still available at the Warwickshire Council Archives.

So a trip to Warwick would hopefully tell me who the first owner might be. I had a faint hope it might be someone well known as the car was originally delivered to Healey's Cape works (according to the heritage certificate ).


So what did I find? Not what I had hoped. No names. My car was one of 10 cars registered at the same time to "Healey Motor Co", registered SAC 407 to SAC 416, the last four of which were marked "export" in brackets.

I am fairly sure from this that my car was originally sold to a US serviceman in the UK as Healey had ageed an exclusive deal with Austin to sell to the US forces over here. Also there were no records of the subsequent annual taxation (although the council archivist did tell me that those records were incomplete). Did the US servicemen over here have to pay road tax?

Of the other cars (mine is SAC 410) none seem to have survived (at least they are not registered in the UK).

So I have a little bit more of the puzzle but have reached a bit of a dead end. At some point i will go back to the archive to see if the taxation records exist for any of the other nine that might give me a clue.

 

[pan]

Steve, I have sent a PM.
Alwyn.

 

[bdcvg]

Wish there was some way to trace cars here in the USA, My car was purchased by a U.S. Serviceman in '65 and then a ghost until My Grandfather got the car in 1970.