Alex, that covers all bases

Agreed. After much hair pulling I decided to ask for...

Make: Volkswagen
Model: 1300
Variant: Eagle SS
Body Style: Sports Coupe

I've asked for future correspondence to be either through email or phone as having to constantly send letter after letter is going to take forever. Although the DVLA woman was kind enough to give me a free-post envelope, just a shame i don't trust the post and paid the extra for recorded.
Hopefully she feels so vastly out of her depth after reading my reply on "how-its-a-vw-1300-but-not-really-but-is-but-isnt......" that she just , agrees with me and sends it through.

Alternatively I wonder how high up my letter will be passed before someone has the authority to make a decision. I have a feeling its going to be inspection. If so I'm gonna argue that what the car should be called, not be decided by the inspection officer in Chelmsford, on the day of an inspection as his opinion/decision on what it is or isnt could be completely wrong. I'd rather have the official letter saying "it needs to say this....because....." from the DVLA swansea to pull out in any future problems.

I think BBC might be right about the Ford Pop, but it surely can't be the case for the '34 3-window. There's more fibreglass replicas kicking around than the real thing, and all with custom (i.e. not Ford) chassis running IRS etc. and a blown Chevy 454 with a TH400 backing it up... you get the picture.

What does the tax disc say? Its a '34 Ford.

There's a really nice pro-street Dodge Challenger in the MMA. It has a full spaceframe, strut front suspension, custom rack & pinion, narrowed Ford 9" with a 5-link at the back, and a full aluminium interior. Rebuilt (non-original) 440 with a tunnel ram intake and twin 850s with a 727 Torqueflite.

The roof and rear fenders are original, but the front is a fibreglass flip-front, and only the windscreen is glass.

What does the tax disc say? 1971 Dodge, of course.

The classic and custom car scene run roughshod through the DVLA rule book, but like BBC says, because they look like the car they are trying to replicate, the owner invariably gets away with it. Even certain replicas can do this (GT40 kits for instance, registered as a 1969 Ford, when clearly they are using a '78 Granada and a new 302 as a base - with a Renault transaxle of course!)

Any originally-styled kit car is doomed

Lauren

Hi Ben
I dont know if things have changed recently but when my boss had his Rush tested/sva'd in march this year , they didn't do it in Chelmsford anymore , he had to trailer it to Norwich twice.
fore warned just in case mate.
Dave.

Cheers for the warning, I had been told by the Chelmsford DVLA people about the lack of IVA test centres in essex, weirdly they too said I would also have to trailer it there and back, which im not sure is true, I'm sure I've read somewhere that you can drive it there and back, similar to an MOT

The Chelmsford DVLA office does do inspections though. When i went in to get my v5c for the car they kept trying to get me to bring it in for one, patronisingly kept saying "we'll book you in for next week, yeh?" I stood my ground saying the car is in pieces all over my front driveway and i wasn't moving it until i had a v5c saying it wasn't stolen/scrapped.

Dont worry, I definitely wont be going down the IVA route. IVA has been designed as a guide for Kit car builders, which in turn design their kits to meet the IVA standards. Our cars were never designed to meet those requirements and I'd rather spend all that money on trying to get it up to IVA standards on another beetle kipper that I know gets the full 13 points under the radically altered points system and change over the Eagle SS body. I could probably sell my lovely freshly painted/repaired kipper to someone wanting a base for a LWB buggy or similar.