Yes, we never did figure that one out.
What is the source of the information that London March 1939 is the origin of KMG registrations?
Was the Registration Mark changed, or is there a chance that the car sat around unregistered for a year?
I am not acquainted with the UK registration laws, so I don’t know how or under what circumstances a car could have had its registration mark changed.
One would think that there would have been a note to that effect in the Continuation Book.
I found an on-line source and it made me wonder if there was a handwriting error where HMG got translated to KMG probably at the time of first registration since it’s unlikely that your ACE numbers got altered. https://www.oldclassiccar.co.uk/registrations/mg.htm
Great info Peter. Thanks.
To compare mine, NJW427, it is accurate in being from July 1954 onward which certainly ties in with my car being first registered 8 Sept 54.
I can’t be sure about the 1930s but dealers in the UK could/do ‘buy’ blocks of numbers in advance AFAIK. This lets them sell cars with number plates and documentation whilst the ‘paperwork’ is still being processed by the authorities. At a guess the last few plates of a batch might finally be allocated to new cars some time after the registrations were booked out to the dealer.
Ok that would make sense going one way, say HMG on a '39 car, but not the other way, KMG on my Jan '38 car.
To reiterate this conundrum…
My JDHT certificate says:
Original Distributor … Henlys London
Original Dealer … Not recorded
Date of Dispatch … 10 January 1938
First Owner … C Simon Ltd
Registration Mark … Not recorded
The Continuation Book says:
Date of original registration … 31-1-38
So I am contemplating a few theories:
KMG was available on 31 Jan 1938
The car sat around unsold until Mar '39
The info on oldclassiccar…co.uk is wrong
The car first went to some foreign country for a year
The reg mark was changed
But as Sherlock Holmes says, it is a capital mistake to theorize in advance of the facts.
I wonder if the original log book is stored somewhere?
The log books were the responsibility of the keepers (not necessarily owners) although ledgers were kept at county level. When records were computerised in the early 70s some counties looked after their ledgers better than others. It would not surprise me if most actual ledgers no longer exist and AFAIK there is no formal repository of log books anywhere.
Again, I’m no expert but as a schoolboy car spotter I had some familiarity with the UK system.
Pre-63 (when date-related suffixes came in) the two last letters (or the only two letters before they went to three) denoted the original registration district. I think this usually corresponded to cities and/or counties and the AA handbook used to have a long list of the letter pairs matched to registration district. Big cities like London, Birmingham, Manchester etc had several letter pairs at their disposal and smaller ones had fewer.
There are known dates when letters followed by numbers switched to numbers followed by letters (or vice-versa?) but I was never aware that the first of three letters was related in any way to date. One might think that A came before B or H before K but I never heard of that. I suspect that in the same way dealers were allocated blocks of numbers the various offices were also allocated blocks. That could easily mean H and J were being issued at the same time or maybe even back to front. A number KKD 538 would not necessarily mean an older Liverpool car than MKD 538 AFAIK.
Excellent. When I first saw the thumbnails I thought that must be the source for the AA’s pages which looked exactly the same from my memory of 50 years ago. Then I saw it has dates where the AA table shows locations. The preamble about Chief Constables and the Ministry etc. looks familiar too, so there must be as similar location table not specific to dates. Somewhere I have one of those yellow AA handbooks but I still haven’t unpacked my emigration boxes of books from 2012
Thank you Peter.
That knocks out theories 1 & 3.
The Kithead Trust is in Droitwich southwest of Birmingham. It says I should search the second and third letters MG, and that puts me in Middlesex. I don’t find a town or county called Middlesex, but there is a Middlesex University in Hendon northwest of London.
Middlesex County used to exist. It is in the Domesday Book. Founded by the middle Saxons who spelled it Middel Saexe. A saexe was a long dagger or short sword. Apparently Middlesex as a county was swallowed up by Greater London in 1965.
To search Middlesex records I go to the Omnibus Society library in Walsall northwest of Birmingham.
Well, I’m getting a virtual tour of the UK on Googlemaps anyway.
But it looks like the Omnibus people don’t have records for xMG registrations.
Looks like a dead end.
Well, I gained some information. The registration was in Middlesex.
Whether H or K, and how could H become K is still a mystery to me.
Thanks again. I understand the concept of bad handwriting. And yet the license plates were issued with K, and renewed many times with K. How did that happen?
I don’t know what the process was for a local authority to issue a new number but it would not surprise me if the only records of road tax payment were the stamping on the log book and the stamping on the vehicle Tax Disc.
So let us suppose that the Licencing Authority issued the first log book with HMG274 and the garage supplying the car then had the number plates made up as KMG274 (because that is how they interpreted the handwriting on the log book).
When the Road Tax was paid the Licencing Authority stamped the book and everybody was happy. In all subsequent years the owner took his Log Book along and a form confirming his present address and the car’s details including the registration number KMG274 and paid the tax. The clerk checks that everything including the registration number is correct and stamps the log book as tax paid for that year and issues the Tax Disc filled in with the details submitted on the retaxing application form.
The Continuation Log Book that you have a copy of would have been issued at the time of a change of ownership and the details of that change would have been submitted on a form by the new owner who not unreasonably considered his car to be KMG274. So that is what the Local Authority wrote in the new Log Book.
Now you may well ask what happened to the owner a totally different car who two years later was issued with the registration KMG274? Well there is no problem. He/she pays their Road Tax their log book is stamped and off they go with their Tax Disc filled in correctly.
The only time that a problem would arise would be if the police enquired of the Local Authority whether the details of SS Jaguar registration KMG274 were correct.
Ah, I had forgotten that bit, that unlike the US practice, the plates were not issued by the Middlesex Licensing Authority, who presumably would have done it correctly, and would not have even had KMG plates in stock at the time. Funny that nobody at the office checked that the garage had done it right (“What’s all this, Sunny Jim? We’re not issuing KMG plates yet. Trying to put one over on me, eh?”).
And HMG273 was probably entered in some big book of car regs as having been assigned, but no car ever actually used it. But a year later KMG273 would have been assigned to some other car. So I guess nobody would notice unless the two cars happened to come together.
That sounds a plausible enough story, explains and reconciles the 31 Jan 1938 issuing date anyway, so I’ll go with that, unless something else turns up.
What funny things we learn, playing around with these old cars.
Richard,
Looks like your thread has been somewhat gazumped, as does happen.
Apart from most agreeing it is probably Chassis Number 248329, can I please ask why you say it is an SS1 AIRLINE ?
Does the documentation you have specifically say it is an AIRLINE, as otherwise it could be some other Dec 1934 SS1 chassis, with another type of body, SALOON, COUPE, TOURER, DHC or indeed SS.90
Thanks Peter. I tried that website but it just seems to go around in circles, and some of the click buttons take me to searches for American plates. One click led to the statement that the plate was issued in Middlesex, but we already knew that. I begin to suspect that “We have found the following plate:” means “We found that the plate is a legitimate UK number, but give us money to go to the Kithead website”…i.e. “tell you that it is in Middlesex and we can’t tell you anything more.”
I heard from Kitheadtrust. Here is what they had to say.
“Dear Rob
We cannot tell you very much! KMG was a Middlesex County Council issue and was issued over the period March to May 1939 which should cover the date shown in your photocopy of the log book.
No other details remain for Middlesex, so there is nowhere else I can refer you to for further details.
Best regards
Peter Jaques”
I’ll try them again with HMG273.
Yes, sorry about the site. If you scroll down and hit “Older Plates” it takes you to a matrix of registration numbers and if anyone had sent them details of HMG273 or KMG273 they might have had something to give you. At least there’s nobody else claiming to own a car with KMG273 registration but that was highly unlikely anyway.
Given that the Middlesex records were destroyed the Kithead Trust won’t have anything on HMG273 either.
At least you have a good idea about your car’s identity even if you don’t know much about the first owner. I managed to find out about my car’s first owner and the family even had photos of him in a couple of cars but none of my car and I’ve hit a dead end trying to discover its original registration number.
