[CoupeFan]

hi Coupe fan, thanks for your comments. Are you saying that the honda engined coupes, even auto ones, were only made up till June 1995

No that is not what I'm saying. I used 92/3 etc as cars do not fit calendar years, with new models or spec changes tending, but not always, to come in the Autumn in time for the car shows at that time of year and remaining the same for very roughly, but not always, the following 12 months. Auto or manual makes no difference. As has been pointed out by Montegoman the factory changeover from Series 1 to Series 2 is believed to be July 1996. Hence 95/6 for Series 1 means cars made from mid '95 to the changeover in July '96, and for Series 2 cars 96/7 means cars made from the changeover in July or possibly August '96 to mid '97 when the spec of the standard 1.6 coupe changed again because if the introduction of the 1.6 SE model.

Your registration prefix is probably as good a guide as any to the age of your car:
K = August '92 - July '93 The Coupe was launched at the Paris Motor Show in October 1992.
L = August '93 - July '94
M = August '94 - July '95
N = August ' 95 - July '96
O was not used to avoid confusion with the number zero (0)
P = August '96 - July '97
Q was not used as it was reserved for use with cars where the age was not known with any degree of certainty, (sometimes kit cars) or for imports
R = August '97 - July '98 (My own car is an R, registered September '97 but is a Series 2 SE that first appeared so I understand in the July '97 price list, making it a 97/8 car.)
At some point the change became twice a year, sorry I can' t remember the details, and S, T, V, W, X and Y were all used, in preparation for the introduction of the current system in 2001. But this is irrelevant if your coupe has the Honda D16 engine as it cannot be older than mid-late '92 (depending on when the first coupe went down the line in Longbridge) or younger than mid' 96 when coupes started being built to the Series 2 spec with Rover K series 1.6 & 1.8VVC engines.

After that the spec of your car also gives clues as to its age, notably,
<> location of the horn push Steering column centre (92/3 & 93/4) or 2 buttons (94/5 onwards);
<> remote fob type Infra Red (92/3 & 93/4) or Radio Frequency (94/5 onwards)
<> illumination around ignition key barrel (92/3 only);
<> radiator grille - body colour "letterbox" (to October '93) or Rover chrome (November '93 onwards);
<> OEM radio R652 (92/3, 93/4 & 94/5 )or R750 (95/6);
<> whether your car is the 216 SE Series 1 (Honda engined) model (1995 only) - your Service Portfolio book may tell you if it is an SE.
<> colour ( as colours came and went, only Flame Red, Nightfire Red and Tahiti Blue were always in the range for UK cars.

But without knowing the answers to these questions I can't be more specific.

I hope this helps you in whatever you're trying to do.

[CoupeFan]

For the sake of completeness, the year prefix letters after R were:
S = August '98 to February '99
T = March '99 to August '99
U was not used.
V = September '99 to February '00
W = March '00 to August '00
X = September '00 to February '01
Y = March '01 to August '01.

Also, but I don't know when, the DVLA stopped letting you move a registration for a younger car to an older car as unscrupulous folks were doing that to fool potential buyers into thinking that the car was younger than it actually was. They do let you move an older registration to a younger car. If they didn't the "cherished numbers" business would be dead in the water. Because you can move older numbers to younger cars you cannot totally rely on the registration to be a totally accurate guide to the age. Also at one stage when you moved a cherished number the "donor" car used to get a new registration unrelated to its age. Nowadays the DVLA will allocate a replacement registration number based on the number appropriate to its first registration, if not the actual original number. This stops the unscrupulous moving cherished numbers around to get younger numbers for older cars.

Before the use of the letter prefix to indicate the "year", the year was indicated by a letter suffix. This was introduced in 1963 and 1963 = A, '64 = B etc., the format being ABC 123 A, the reverse of the more recent and familiar to 200 owners format of A 123 ABC.

In 1967, due to pressure from the motor trade to promote sales in the summer instead of the drastic bunching in January, the E suffix only lasted for 7 months, to July '67, with F being applied from August '67 through to July '68 inclusive, G = August '68 to July '69, H = August '70 to July '71, etc. That is why the year letter used by the Series 1 coupes and the majority of Series 2 coupes run from August to July, the change back in 1967.

The letters I, O, Q, U & Z were not used as year suffixes nor subsequently as prefixes. However Q is used when the date of original manufacture is not known or the car has a new chassis, or bodyshell, and engine and has thus lost its age identity. In these cases the DVLA uses the Q prefix and because of this classic vehicle restorers always try to keep the bodyshell/chassis or engine so they do not lose the original registration and its proof of age of the vehicle.

1963's letter suffix method was introduced as several local authorities were running out of the previous regime of up to 3 letters and 3 numbers and 2 letters and 4 numbers which were themselves a reversal of the previous numbers & letters sequence.

Whilst Northern Ireland used the letters I and Z to indicate cars registered there, from 1963 they had a different arrangement as they did not use a prefix to indicate the year but reverted to the letters followed by numbers format, and added an extra letter in front of the 2 letters making their registrations 3 letters followed by 4 numbers. If you see a personalised number with the letters I or Z then that would have been issued in Northern Ireland , e.g. 1234 KZ or CIA 1234. In the second example C does not represent 1965 as it would in England, Scotland & Wales. They cannot conflict with English, Scottish and Welsh registrations simply because the Northern Irish ones contain an I or Z and do not use the letter year as a suffix or prefix to the numbers.

I think that I and Z were also used by the Republic of Ireland, but nowadays the have their own registration series totally independent of the UK. Registrations -I and Z- were specific to the Republic and I- and -Z were specific to Northern Ireland. Thus registrations in the formats 1234 IA, 1234 AZ, IA 1234 and AZ 1234 were Northern Ireland whilst 1234 AI, 1234 ZA, AI 1234 , and ZA 1234 were the Republic of Ireland. If you think it strange that the Republic of Ireland once shared a car registration system with the UK, the registration of motor cars began in 1903 and hence predates the Republic leaving the UK in 1922.

Apologies - Too Long and Off Topic, but relevant to dating a car using its registration.

[CoupeFan]

One final thought on getting the age of your car.

Look at the V5C which will shows the date first registered. Your car cannot be younger than that as you cannot register a car before it's been made.

That's really all it tells you as the gap between manufacture and registration could be weeks or months, depending on what dealer incentives were being offered by Rover at the time, or if your car was stored unregistered with lots of others in a field waiting for a buyer. Even if it was "made to order" due to its particular combination of optional extras, the gap between manufacture and registration would be at least 2-3 weeks.

[SteveB]

Some (most?) of the plastic trim parts have a manufacturing date cast into the back of them - at least you can know when those bits have been made!

[CoupeFan]

Some (most?) of the plastic trim parts have a manufacturing date cast into the back of them - at least you can know when those bits have been made!

Yes, that works to give an earliest date. But taking the car apart to find one seems a bit of overkill. Fortunately, the trim panel over the passenger compartment fusebox is designed to be easy to open, and it has month and year flags moulded into it. Mine also has a self-adhesive paper label from the injection moulders Key Plastics UK with the date 20-08-97 as well a moulding date of Aug 97, see photo below.

On the basis of that specific date, 20/8/97, and the date of first registration of my car, 24/9/97, it looks like my Tommy was made/ built/manufactured/assembled sometime between 20th August and 10th September '97, if you allow 2 weeks for delivery from Longbridge to the Rover dealer in Milton Bridge, near Edinburgh, who supplied the car and their PDI on its arrival in Scotland.

You may find that you can get as close, or if you're lucky even closer, with your car, to the date it was built, and that's probably as good as you're likely to get if you're after a specific date short of getting hold of the factory records. However I've read that they're unobtainable for the early 1990s onwards as no one knows what happened to them after all the changes of ownership and fragmentation of the BL then Rover Group activities.

[CoupeFan]

To conclude my story, I now have official written confirmation that the build date for my car was 8th September 1997. So my guesstimate date range of 20/8/97 to 10/9/97 was pretty much on the money.