Before I start, I intend in the short term to carry on as I intended when I started the rebuild project, and to just get the car MOT'd and back on the road at the end, followed with a change to the engine capacity / number on the v5. I'm already listed as a Nova, 2-door sports, black etc on my historic number plate.
But realistically what is our legal status?
There is so much grey area, and even the official guidance on what you should do is written in such a way that it can be open to individual interpretation.
I'm thinking of future proofing ourselves here - the way things are going the DVLA are reviewing the historic vehicles already registered and challenging them to prove their age, a task that for many (genuine or not) will prove hard to impossible.
Personally I'm not against having to have a Q-plate and paying road tax. Yeah the historic vehicle status is nice, and true to an extent, and for some reason there is a stigma about Q-plates, but that kind of thing has never bothered me much to be honest.
But, IVA... The Nova is not best suited to passing an IVA
GT40 replicas manage it, so there must be things we can do to get them through it?
What would be the areas of most concern?
I am aware that it states a minimum 500mm mounting height for the headlights - although I fail to see in the IVA documents if that refers to top/centre/bottom of headlight unit etc.
What else would be a problem?
I want my car on the road for another 40 years, and many of you do too, so the earlier we think about how they can be made to conform to the regulations the better, right?
It must be better to think about how to conform, than to think about how to get around - something the kit industry has dismally failed to grasp to be honest, with stripped out track cars (on the 'if it's not there they can't test it' approach to avoiding the rules) and MR2/MX5/etc body swaps (on the exploiting poorly defined loopholes approach to avoiding the rules).
If we had a formula for what needed to be done to pass that would help everyone wouldn't it?