Finding the History Of My Mini

[IanMcGoo22]

Hi Everybody,

My name is Ian McGee and I live in Montreal, Canada. I have a 1959 Morris Mini-Minor Deluxe that was originally sold in the UK. This post is mainly directed towards the British members of this forum.

I don't know the original UK registration number of the car. Without that, is there any way of finding out any of its history? If I understand it correctly, your DVLA works more with registration numbers than car serial numbers. Here it's the other way round. Over here, a car can have many different registration numbers throughout its life, in fact we used to get a new license plate every year when I was a kid.

I do have a Heritage certificate that says my car was built in November '59 and sent to Haslemere Motors, in Guildford, Surrey. I've owned it since 1993, and I think it was imported in the 70's and I'm the third owner over here. That's really all I know.

If anyone has any ideas how I could find out more I'd be interested to hear from you.

Thanks a lot,

Ian

[rich@minispares.com]

ian


if it was imported in the 1970's then it will not be on the dvla computer system, so nothing will be found.

you could go to the Guilford council offices and trawl through their registration ledgers (if both the council and the ledgers still exist - they don't always) and look at the pages for the time your car was registered - you may be lucky that way


I suspect it will be a wild goose chase (that's different from a wildgoose chase... )

[1ely]

Hi Ian,

I live in Guildford, there is a council office, If Rich thinks there might be a paper trail I could ask for you. I guess I would need some numbers off the car to tie up with the records? Not sure how this would work without the reg number.
Regards Francis

[IanMcGoo22]

Francis, that's a very generous offer I'd be very happy to accept. I'll send you a private message with the numbers and my contact info.
Thanks a lot!

[Pete]

There are no records at Guilford, I think Surrey records were moved to Droitwich along with many other council registration records, I'll check later. From the records I've seen they don't always contain a chassis number either.

[814CWE]

hazlemere sold quite a large batch of minis in jan 1960 (mostly nov 59 built) under XHO 500-600 reg numbers.majority of these were white for some strange reason
i did this research a few yrs ago as i had a nov 59 built 59 sold by hazlemere in jan 60

[1ely]

Looks like things have moved on a bit, got your PM Ian.

Francis

[Simon776]

Just because your Heritage Certificate says it was despatched to the Haslemere Motor Co, Guildford it doesn't necessarily mean that they sold it to its first owner. Haslemere Motor Co were Morris distributors and would have supplied a large number of the Morris dealers and retail dealers and stocking traders in the south Surrey/north Hampshire/west Sussex area. HMC themselves also had branches in Aldershot, Haslemere and Woking.

There are no 1950's/1960's registration records for Surrey known to survive.

hazlemere sold quite a large batch of minis in jan 1960

Haslemere Motor Co or Hazlemere Motor Co? Presumably the former but two completely different places and companies, one Morris and the other Austin.

The XHO registration mentioned above is a Hampshire registration, not Surrey.

[814CWE]

this i know..but my old xho car was first registered in surrey..it goes against the grain but stuff like this happened ..

[Old English White]

I suspect it will be a wild goose chase (that's different from a wildgoose chase... )

Yes. If you're lucky (unlucky?) enough to own a "wildgoose" you wouldn't want to do any chasing in it that's for sure

[rich@minispares.com]

I suspect it will be a wild goose chase (that's different from a wildgoose chase... )

Yes. If you're lucky (unlucky?) enough to own a "wildgoose" you wouldn't want to do any chasing in it that's for sure

im glad someone got my joke