Dealer Launch Vehicle History Question
 

Excuse the slightly long first post, but I’m trying to understand the history of my car a little better and I hope you knowledgeable people might be able to help.

I’ve had my car since November, but I sadly know very little about its past. Based on the chassis number and slightly strange specification, I’m 99% certain it’s one of the dealer launch cars (Serpent alloys were added recently). However, I’m curious about what happened to the car after it was built.

https://onedrive.live.com/embed?resi...hDI&height=660

The car has a Northampton number plate (ending 'NV') and the service book shows that the car had its pre-delivery inspection carried out at the Rover Preparation Centre in Rugby. From what I’ve been able to gather so far, these two things could mean it was a Rover staff/management vehicle as these were PDI’d in Rugby and registered via a DVLA office in Northamptonshire.

https://onedrive.live.com/embed?resi...GGQ&height=660

My question is, were the dealer launch vehicles all PDI’d by Rover themselves and then delivered to dealers? If the dealers did PDI their own launch vehicles, does that mean my car is likely to have been Rover-owned at the start of its life? Or could there be something else going on?

Thanks in advance for any light anyone can shed.

Send reebs a pm with the vin, he may have all the details 😎

Sent from my SM-A145R using Tapatalk

Looks like it could be a dealer launch car the build data will confirm it is not freely available on here but Reebs will get it for you as Ronnie has suggested but if you can't wait I can get it easily for you

I'll drop Reebs a message, thanks for the suggestion :}

Do you have a launch car Dave? If you've got the service book, does it say where the car was PDI'd?

Yes I have a launch car but it was registered by a main dealer, the stamp in your book means the car was pre registered by rover

Perfect, that's useful to know. Thank you!

You are welcome to join the Lincolnshire rover club and attend the East kirkby aviation Centre meet if you want

NV is interesting as we own two of the lower spec launch cars and they are LNV.

Maybe Josh you could get the build data as this club does not have it freely available

Hi Rob I've answered your PM and given you the build data. It's a dealer launch car for sure but sadly I can't tell you anymore about it's specific history or how it was used prior to being sold at the dealership. The build records don't have that I'm afraid.

If you take a look at the Dealer Launch List thread :smilie_re: Here

you'll see there are at least two other UNV registered cars like yours

http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/n...9.jpg~original

http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/n...2.jpg~original

But as to whether they went to the same dealership as yours, I couldn't say. :shrug:

Thanks everyone for the information.

I'm working on the basis that my car was probably pre-registered by Rover, was part of their ACOP programme for employees, or was a management car.

There's a post on mg-rover.org that mentions ACOP cars were registered via the Kettering DVLA office and would therefore have had Northampton suffixes or pre-fixes (depending on when it was registered). I've been told by a former Rover employee that the Rugby preparation centre was used from the mid-1990s until the Rover/Land Rover split.


"ACOP/Employee Cars were not registered in Birmingham, most were done in Kettering (Northampton) as it was the closest office to where the cars were PDI'd hence the "KV" or "K?" plates.

The vast majority of Engineering cars were registered in Birmingham, "BX" plates as they didn't require PDI as we used to do them all in the Flight Shed or in Methods build."
- https://www.mg-rover.org/threads/who...direct.281602/

For the period your car is from BX wouldn’t have been around it would have been OE,OX ect. Our LNV reg cars were stamped Cowley engineering workshops but we think they were at a specific launch…

Yeah, the registration letters quoted in the forum post mentioned were for post-2001 cars, but I assume the locations still apply for cars with pre-2001 registration numbers.

Interestingly, those two cars were registered on the same day as mine (27th September), so I wonder if Rover was pre-registering launch cars they had left in stock to hit a number/market share for September 1999.

On post September 2001 cars BX would be Birmingham. On pre September 2001 cars BX would be Carmarthenshire in West Wales.