Yesterday, outside an unexpected house, I nearly saw my car.
It wasn't my car because I no longer have one, but I did have one once and this was very nearly it. It was the right make, if not the right model. It was nearly the right colour. It had a few too many doors. It was cleaner than I remembered. And it very nearly had my numberplate.
When you've only ever had one car you tend to remember what its numberplate was. This car caught my eye because its numberplate was very similar to mine, indeed so similar that it must have been sold by the same dealer at around the same time. All the letters were the same and the three-digit number was less then ten away from what mine had been. That's incredibly unlikely, I thought.
It's incredibly unlikely because there are 32 million cars in the UK, fewer than 1000 of which have the same letters as mine. It's incredibly unlikely because most of those 1000 have numbers a lot further away than a single-digit margin. And it's incredibly unlikely because I bought my car new in March 1999, back when 'T' registrations were just rolling into showrooms, which'd make it 22 years old. Any car with almost the same numberplate as mine must have been bought in the same month, which is pretty old for a car, so it probably isn't even on the road any more.
The one thing that made it a bit less unlikely is that I was back in the town where I'd bought the car. If any of its near neighbours were still in existence they'd most likely be in that same town, or not far away, and so it proved. The street I was walking down was only six miles from the showroom where I'd bought it, and likely they had too, there being a limited number of Volkswagen dealerships in the area.
I'm always on the lookout for my original car because it would be really cool to spot it again after all this time. But given that I sold it just before I moved to London, instantly putting fifty miles between myself and the new owners, I immediately reduced the chances of spotting it considerably. I never have, and I suspect never will because according to the DVLA's online tax checker it went to the great scrapyard in the sky four years ago.
But nearly seeing my car, give or take a few digits, still put a big grin on my face. I hope its owners weren't looking out of the front window at that point because it was a very big grin and they might have thought I was nuts, especially when I stopped to take a celebratory photograph.
I've since done some research and I know the car's taxed and its MOT is up to date. I also know that the house where I saw it hasn't been sold since 1999 so I suspect the car is still with the original owners. They have two cars, as I was able to deduce from the rectangular dry patch on the drive alongside, so I suspect they also own something much newer. And best of all I've discovered that the owner runs a carvalet service, indeed there was a promotional sticker in his porch window, which helps explain why this 22 year-old car still looks utterly sparkling and almost new.
When I bought my car the dealers told me they had a block of 40 numberplates and asked me which one I'd like. I obviously went for the one with the most interesting three-digit number, given there was nothing I could change about the letters.
But suddenly seeing one of those 40 yesterday has made me wonder what happened to the rest... and the DVLA's website has allowed me to find out.
cannot be found
SORN
untaxed
✔
• Of the 40 numberplates the dealership had available back in March 1999, the DVLA is now only aware of 19 of them. The other 21 all come up as "Vehicle details could not be found", which'll either be because the car's been scrapped or because the numberplate in question was never issued.
• Five of the 40 now have a SORN declaration, that's a Statutory Off Road Notification, so I won't be seeing them driving around any time soon. It looks like most of these are quite recent, likely pandemic related, because there's no point in taxing a car you're no longer driving.
• 12 of the 40 are still on the DVLA's books but are no longer taxed or under MOT. The earliest disappearance was back in 2004, and seven of the twelve stopped being used within the first ten years. I'm quite proud that my old car is the longest serving of this bunch, having continued to be driven until 2017 at the grand old age of 18.
• And only two of the original 40 are still on the road. One's an Audi whose car tax has nine months to run and one's the Volkswagen I saw up a random street yesterday. What's more the VW is the car with the closest numberplate to my own, which means I can now stop looking because I'm never going to see one better.
I very nearly didn't walk down that street, indeed it's a ridiculously unimportant residential backwater on the outer fringes of nowhere much. But I'm glad I did because it just so happened to contain a car that was very nearly mine.
