Dwindling numbers...

[Negative Creep]

Anyone else really fancy an SD1 right about now?

[minolman]

Because the DVLA are a little haphazard at what they register cars as, especially ones that are low volume to start with. My Audi 90 Quattro Sport 20v for example omitted the "90" and the "20v" from the V5 so it won't show up on howmanyleft.... Not a problem on a Vectra LS but there were only 250 of those to start with and I've not seen one in a while for sale.

Yep, as I said the data is only as good as the person who filled the form in to register the car. This could be the DVLA local office clerk, main dealer rep attending the office or private owner going through the import and register paperwork for the first time. It's open to interpretation as to what a car is called. You can't totally blame the DVLA unless you think they should be the final arbiter on all decisions since in many cases it will be the main dealer or the importing agency who fills in the paperwork to register the car, the DVLA clerk checking it might not have even known about certain limited model designations

 

My 1987 car is what all and sundry call a "Yugo". Indeed if I tell people I have a Zastava and then they see it they invariably say "Oh you meant a Yugo". Yet when I inquired about the V5 paperwork and was asked to confirm the details and I said Yugo they said sorry that doesn't match our records! Of course it was registered as a Zastava make, Model Yugo 311, registered as such because the importer was Zastava GB, yet this was after the range's wholesale name change to call all the cars Yugo's.

 

I'm not defending the DVLA - I just don't think there is any better way to approximate such statistics. The only other way would be to write in freedom of information requests. 

 

The DVLA has a history of mixed results with comms

[Pillock]

No, they do a decent job considering.... Just means that it's not as simple as yanking a number from howmanyleft which is the current fashion for eBay sellers and their barn finds. Gets even worse like you say with odd imports and dealer specials.... for example VW never imported any special edition Beetles in the 70s at all. Yet plenty were on sale, with advertising created by VW, built by dealers from 1200 base models or 1300s. What they were registered as is anyone's guess so tracing a rare special edition is pretty tough.

[HMC]

^Yeah the e bay sellers' quotes often raise a smile....

 

'the only GLXie left'

 

There happens to be a few hundered GLie ones still knocking about, the same minus a vanity mirror or intermittant wash wipe.

[keef]

I thought the tree and rope was a hanging thing.

[panhard65]

The dvla do make most of the mistakes virtually all the cars I have imported they haven't put the model name in even though I filled it in on the form. It will only get worse now the local offices have shut down.