Fast Marina Magazine

copied this from BSC (cortina-forum) as i thought it might be of interest to you ...
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Had a special notice come through at the garage I work at as an MoT tester. Thought you guys might be interested in some of the changes which can or will effect you. The main one for classic car owners is this one

If you car has black and silver number plates and is registered AFTER 1st January 1973 it will FAIL If you have these fitted you must change them to a yellow with black characters at the rear and a white with black characters at the front. Doesn't have to be the latest plastic ones, I think you can still get the metal ones from some suppliers. Pre 73 is fine.

If you own a modern car the most changes have happened here and this morning alone we've had to fail 3 cars already.

Basically cars registered on or after 1st September 2001 must have bog standard plates. It will even now fail if it's missing the supplying outlets name and post code and also must display a BSAU 145d marking. If you have any stickers on the plate like a St. Georges flag, a football team or something on the plate that will now also fail. If you have a image in the background ie Ford, then that will also fail. Obviously the spacing has always been a failure but they have tightened up on the characters themselves as well and the borders have to be a certain thickness etc...

You are allowed to have international symbols or flags on them (dual purpose plates ) but they must have been there when the plate was manufactured

Just thought I post this to warn you now so as to save any problems and failures for you in the future. Please note that it's not the MoT testers who make the rules, it's the government and VOSA so please don't give us MoT people a hard time
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Hmm thats a shame the modern plates look horrible (in my opinion)

There is a bit on the VOSA website http://www.vosa.gov.uk/vosacorp/newsand ... ottest.htm

with a PDF Q&A bit "The regulations stipulate that the requirements are dependent on
the date that the vehicle was first registered. Therefore, old style
black and silver type registration plates which are permitted on pre-
1973 vehicles, are not permitted to be fitted to a vehicle first
registered on or after 1st January 1973."

Thanks for bringing this to peoples attention though Jan, it annoys me that they keep brining in stupid legistlaton like this though and I keep seeing a 1992 mini with black and silver plates! Maybe I will print out the leaflet and leave it on their windscreen :p

in norway we are used to this strict rules regarding number plates. it have gone so far that to produce plates you must be government approved. and since norway have such small population there is only one approved company in each region of norway. This again leads to monopolized prices. I payed £38 for a set of plates for my car last month

The registration plate colour isn't something new. The 1st January 1973 date was enforced back in the 1970s, I got warned back then at MOT time for having a black and white plate on a 1975 car.

The regs come under the Vehicle Licensing legislation rather than the Road Traffic Act, so it wasn't endorsable although there was a possible fine, if a copper nicked you.

All that has happened is that some twerp at VOSA has been looking through the old legislation for something new to fail cars on.

I've been talking to a friend of mine who is an MOT tester and he thinks this new requirement is just silly. He can think of many other areas which modern cars can be failed on apart from number plates, in short the car can fail simply because it does not display a postcode on the new plate. Very petty in my mind.

I got stopped in my home town a few weeks after I brought my 1972 Austin Marina van back because an -insert rude word here- Copper tried to tell me my black and white plates were illegal.

The copper was training up a young lad at the time so he thought he would show off. Bad mistake on his part as he never had a clue what he was talking about. He insisted that my van was a 1973 model and that’s when the law changed (well he got one bit right). I asked him why he thought it was a 73 van – his answer was because it’s an L reg and L was 1973. I didn’t disagree that an L could be 73 but I pointed out that L started in Aug 72 and ended in Aug 73 and as for the law on black and white plates I pointed out to him that the law changed on the 31st Jan 1973 and any vehicle after that date should display coloured plates and pay TAX.

He didn’t like my answer and insisted that I was wrong. I then asked him to do a check on the motor (which he did) and he had his walkie talkie up loud so I could hear. He was grinning like a Persian cat when the controller gave him the details of the car back over the radio. His puss soon dropped when the controller read out that it was registered to me, taxed, tested and insured. He still insisted that my plates were wrong and having walked round the motor a few time he became even more confused as I had an Austin badge on the bonnet and a Morris badge on the back door.

By this time he was getting a bit humpty and then he called it a Morris Marina van, again I corrected him but he must have thought I was taking the piss which I wasn’t because he was doing a good enough job of that himself. He kept harping on about the plates and had his wee note book in his hand waiting to fill it out. I then asked him if he was 100% sure of the date for black and whites so he radioed up again and asked his controllers if they knew. The controllers never had a clue either, ha! He then told me to get on my way while his young pc trainee tried to keep a straight face. I just smiled at him and said Nae bother.

The young pc admired my wheels at the end of the convo but not wanting to get into a deeper convo and draw more attention to the van I just said they were coming off and getting changed for standards and left it at that then I disappeared. The last thing I was wanting was for himm to admire my wheels then notice that the wire was sticking out of them everywhere and the walls were cracked! The funny thing was is, I only took the bloody motor round the corner to free the brakes off so I could adjust them as the van had sat for a while on the drive!

p.s The VOSA guys up my way are total knob jockeys!