XK120 body number question

I’ve just stripped out my boot area prior to putting in the new floors, and after I ripped out the (not correct) carpet from the boot side panels, I discovered the body number F2500 (correct for my car) pop-riveted down towards the rear of the left side panel. Has anyone else seen this before?
I do know that the car received a new body (most likely at the factory) in 1952 after hitting a cow on a rally in 1951. For many years it bore the body number F4576 in the normal position on the front bulkhead, but someone has replaced it with the original F2500. According to John Elmgreen, F4576 was not allocated to a chassis, which fits with it being a service replacement. If the body number is not normally fitted in the boot area, I’m wondering if the car maybe only had the front half of the body replaced, or perhaps the then owner just wanted the original number on the car somewhere… who knows??

a photo of the tag will help
terry


Here are a couple. I gave the tag a very light rub over with some sandpaper to highlight the numbers.

If no one has a better guess, mine is that if it hit a cow, probably only the front half was replaced, with or without the doors, depending on the extent of the damage. Black in the boot is a sign of a Foleshill body before about Dec '52, but F4576 would also be a Foleshill body (SB114). It could be that F4576 was never completed, never received its own rear clip. The owner or the factory workers may have wanted to keep the documentation that the rear clip was still F2500.
If for some reason it was registered with the authorities by the body number, or just including the body number in the registration documents, that might have something to do with it, as a way to retain the original number.

I’m thinking more or less along the same lines as you, Rob. I guess we’ll probably never know the full story…

would be good to get the full history detailed here and some pics and photo of original ID plate and later body tag.
All the roadster body shells I have seen have a 4 digit number Stamped into the rear cockpit roll but never been able to correlate this number to the body number or chassis number
It is interesting that in later years the 3.8 litre coupe had the number riveted in this exact same location.
terry