Hey Dexter, shame this is in the UK

Salutations:

You need a special safety/MOT (annually) here for right hand drive machines. Not that there aren't several, but they are usely something old and special like 60's Jags or Bentley's (any era)..

She looks like a peach otherwise, and at a remarkably low price so far.. Hope it finds a good home..

Question if I might - what is meant by 'J Reg'.. I've seen it before on euro SAAB's but I'm not sure it's used here in Canada as I can't remember seeing it.. It has Carlsson wheels - is that the designation?..

J reg would be the year register, with the letter changing normally arround august.

So a J prefix on the registration plate would be a late 91, early 92, and K plate would be a late 92, early 93 and so on.

When they got to X, they started again at A, but as a Suffix. And it rotated round like like that every 20 something years, ignoringsuch obviously confusing letters as I,O,Z and Q (Q was for kit cars, and other cars that couldn't prove their original age imports, ex race vehicles car built from bits etc that needed to be registered).

Now of course we have a much more sensible system where the middle two characters of the plate show the year.

cars registered at the begining of the year are 0 (zero and then the last number of the current year) cars roughly registered after the middle of the year get a 5 and the last number of the current year.

So a January 2003 car will be 03, while a December 2003 car will be 53. This might not be gospel correct, as I've never been in a position to get to look at cars that new, that seriously, but you get the jist.

Next batch of new registration next year will be 04, so your plate might look like MV 04 ABE first two characters of the plate also indicate where in the UK the car was first registered for the road. Last three characters are supposed to be random, but you can request 3 and have them if they aren't taken.

I want to find out if TO is used by any town as a registration adentifier, and try to register (in august 2005) TO 55 ERS.

Have it light up as I pass BMWs.

Not quite, but I haven't got the hang of the new system either. Or be able to visualise time in the same way, when someone said G-reg it was holidays in the family Herald...

For those at home and abroad who want the *full* story including pre and post '74 and post 2001 regional indicators.

I have no life....