Do I need an MOT?
Discussion
R6VED said:
er...Google it.
I did this using this search "I have a 1966 E Type which has been off the road and Sorn'd since the last MOT ran out in July 2011. The car is now ready to go and I seem to remember there was an announcement a while ago regarding classic cars not requiring an MOT, does this apply to my car?"Guess where google took me ?
Guess where Bing didn't take me?
you do need an mot, only pre 1960 cars are excempt, to my mind this was a ploy by the government to get old cars off the road as insurance companies are not too keen on insuring non MOTd cars and even with those that will I can see complications when a claim arises. There are those who say to overcome this just get the vehicle MOTd,now while you cantake it to a testing station and have it tested you cant have an MOT certificate as the VOSA computerisation wont let an excempt vehicle be registered on the system.
Same old stuff coming out about MOTs on old cars... I own three, 2 x 1930s 1 x 1929.
Taking them for MOTs was a complete waste of time and money, no one in the garage knew what they were looking at! Uncoupled breaks, (ie footbreak does rears, handbreak does front) no seatbelts, no indicators etc etc. They didn't know where to start. One garage would book the car in, make me a cup of tea and not even touch the car while waiting for the elapsed time to pass, print out the certificate and take the money.
A lot of garages near me wouldn't even want the bother and told me to go elsewhere.
The insurance companies have been fine with it, as was the case before you still need to keep your car road worthy, just because it passes a test once a year doesn't make it roadworthy.
Taking them for MOTs was a complete waste of time and money, no one in the garage knew what they were looking at! Uncoupled breaks, (ie footbreak does rears, handbreak does front) no seatbelts, no indicators etc etc. They didn't know where to start. One garage would book the car in, make me a cup of tea and not even touch the car while waiting for the elapsed time to pass, print out the certificate and take the money.
A lot of garages near me wouldn't even want the bother and told me to go elsewhere.
The insurance companies have been fine with it, as was the case before you still need to keep your car road worthy, just because it passes a test once a year doesn't make it roadworthy.
Spot on, I recall a thing from FBHVC that the reason was more to do with fewer and fewer testing stations knowing how to test a car of that age, and not being really interested in investing the time to get the special knowledge due to the very small number of vehicles it would cover. I've had trouble with my car in the past - fails for no visible VIN number, no door mirrors, none of which are relevant - and mine's only from the mid-seventies.
I hadn't heard the thing about insurance companies not wanting to cover MOT-exempt vehicles, it doesn't stack up against other comments that being stopped with no MOT (in a car that does need one) doesn't automatically invalidate insurance any more, if the condition of the vehicle didn't contribute to the reason for the claim. However I bow to those who have such vehicles, of course.
I hadn't heard the thing about insurance companies not wanting to cover MOT-exempt vehicles, it doesn't stack up against other comments that being stopped with no MOT (in a car that does need one) doesn't automatically invalidate insurance any more, if the condition of the vehicle didn't contribute to the reason for the claim. However I bow to those who have such vehicles, of course.
a8hex said:
I'll check later, but I think my new tax renewal has a box about needing an MOT. I thought the box was ticked even though mines a 1958 XK150. I'm with Steffan on this, it will still go in for an MOT at a local place I trust. Its a cheap extra bit of peace of mind.
Errr 
maybe I dreamt this. I couldn't find it when I looked last night.austin said:
Same old stuff coming out about MOTs on old cars... I own three, 2 x 1930s 1 x 1929.
Taking them for MOTs was a complete waste of time and money, no one in the garage knew what they were looking at!
I've had mixed results, a couple of years back I let the guys working on my car take it for an MOT and the guy testing it clearly didn't know. I failed the car for not having any thread on the middle of the tyres with even looking at the obviously unused spare, Blockley cross plies don't have any threads right in the middle. There were other issues with these people too.Taking them for MOTs was a complete waste of time and money, no one in the garage knew what they were looking at!
But normally I use a local big garage where one of their testers does know his classic cars. I always check that he's on duty when I book the car in for the test.
I can see that the "trade" was probably happy to see the back of old cars because many in the business don't know their way around older cars and don't want to take the time (expense) to learn. I'd have rather seen a scheme where garages could have opted out of testing older cars and we could then have had specialist MOT testers.
Gassing Station | Classic Cars and Yesterday's Heroes | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff