Rules on driving with no road tax?

[HotJambalaya]

I'm about to have an old laid up car towed about 50 miles from my place to be worked on, MOTd serviced and generally got running again. I was thinking that once its running I'd get one day car insurance through someone like insure4aday.co.uk or similar, and drive it straight from the garage home.

I vaguely remember that if you had no mot you could go straight to/from the testing station home, does this work for road tax also?

[Aretnap]

You can indeed drive an untaxed vehicle to a pre-arranged MOT and bring it back again. Here, paragraph 22(1). You're correct that it does have to be insured.

[jesta1865]

the one day insurance companies are funny about the age of the cars they will cover, fyi

[Jon1967x]

When you say towed do you mean towed or trailered? I've never though about it before but there might be an issue if it's wheels are on the road.

[GC8]

Wheels on the road equals insurance required. The repairers trade policy may cover it though.

[Rostfritt]

You can drive to a pre arranged MOT and back with no tax, also to an arranged appointment to get it fixed I think. Obviously you need insurance to do this.

I currently have the dilemma of needing to MOT a car that has been laid up and would really need a road test to make sure the brakes are de rusted and balanced. I assume this is not OK? I might need to book it into a more distant MOT station as I could probably drive it to the local one without braking at all if I tried.

[GC8]

There are no rules about test station locations or the routes that you may take. This may irk traffic officers but 'what we take it to mean' means nothing and you arent committing any offences.

I used to drive cars from Southampton and Tilbury docks to MOTs in Yorkshire. It pissed some Officer McKay types off, but there wasnt anything that they could do about it. Never had a Japanese car fail one, btw.

[HotJambalaya]

Jon1967x said:

When you say towed do you mean towed or trailered? I've never though about it before but there might be an issue if it's wheels are on the road.

Interesting, I thought being towed it would be fine. Fortunately its 4wd so needs to go on a flatbed.