When it arrived on the inside cover the previous owner of the car had written the chassis number P1B52622Dn, engine number 7B6442348 (not correct), gearbox number JBN775, Body number 4B54215 and the UK registration number of the car BRD100B. At the bottom of the page the number 54423-8 had been written and I assume this is the correct engine number based on the available records of cars around this chassis number. The original numbers mean the car started life as a manual 3.8s with power steering and the new engine came from a 1966 3.8s although it has an extra unexplained digit.
I decided to do some checks first to see if the car was on our registry but it is not.
Next I checked to see if the car was taxed and still on the road in the UK from our DVLA web site (Driver vehicle licensing authority) using the registration number BRD100B. It would have been nice to return this Operating, Maintenance and service handbook to the cars owner. DVLA came back that it had been SORNed which basically means the car has been taken off the road so the tax does not have to be paid.
Vehicle make JAGUAR
Date of first registration December 1964
Year of manufacture 1964
Cylinder capacity 4727 cc
Fuel type PETROL
Export marker No
Vehicle status SORN
Vehicle colour BLUE
Date of last V5C (logbook) issued 20 May 2015
You might have noticed that the cylinder capacity is listed as 4727cc which is bigger than the 3.8 and bigger than a 4.2 Jaguar engine which is 4235cc which some people shoehorn in.
I then checked the MOT status (Annual vehicle safety check in the UK) of the vehicle and it came back that the MOT had expired on the 3rd of July 2017. Another one gone to the great scrap yard in the sky or so I thought.
I decided to check the MOT history to see if the car had failed its MOT with a list as long as your arm and was possibly deemed unrepairable but that did not seem to be the case. The last MOT on the 4th of July 2016 had failed because the horn was not working but had been repaired straight away and passed with no advisories. Previous MOTs had shown no major work picked up since 2012 when the suspension had been replaced but something else caught my attention. The mileage was listed as only 11250 in July 2016 and going back to the first MOT listed March 2007 the mileage was only 4 miles. Now it could have just run around the clock but the items on the fail list were in my opinion not things an S Type Jaguar would fail on. Having built kit cars before and having had to present them for their first MOT inspection these seemed to me more of a new kit than an old car.
I then went to good old Google and put in the registration number for the car BRD100B and hit search. The search was vast and did not help so I searched on images and low and behold a Cobra Kit car came up with the registration number BRD100B.
Clicking on the link it took me to the Bonhams car auction site https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/21844/lot/347/ which gave lots of details of the car dated December 2014 and stated.
“The car offered here is in the popular Cobra 427 style and was professionally built circa 1990/1991 by Gravetti Engineering, a company that operated out of various premises in Southern England during the 1980s and 1990s. It incorporates a ladder-type chassis and the independent rear suspension from a 1964 Jaguar S-Type saloon. The Cobra takes its identity and nominal year of manufacture from this car, and thus is exempt from road tax, and is registered as a Jaguar. The engine is a Ford small-block V8 of 289ci displacement (4.7 litres), which is equipped with a Holley carburettor and Edelbrock inlet manifold, while the gearbox is a four-speed manual Hurst 'Super Shifter'. “
It states the car was built Circa 1990/91 which is a lie as the first MOT for the car is 2007 with 4 miles on the clock. 1991 might have been when the kit was bought but not finished. The reason the car is dated as 1990/91 is because at this time it was legal to take a donor car like an S Type, change the body and chassis and retain the registration number. Since 1995 this has been illegal and the UK now works on a points system for radically altered vehicles. You get points for certain items you use from the donor car and have to make eight points to retain the registration number.
Chassis, monocoque body shell (body and chassis as one unit) or frame - original or new and unmodified (direct from manufacturer) 5 points
Original suspension front and rear 2 points
Original axles front and rear 2 points
Original transmission 2 points
Original steering assembly 2 points
Original Engine 1 point.
From what I can make out from the description given by Bonhams the only original S Type Jaguar parts used in the construction of this Cobra were the rear axle for possibly one point and the registration number for which you get nothing.
So P1B52622 is legally no more even though the chassis number is out there being used. P1B52622 is certainly no longer an S Type Jaguar in any form and I wonder how many other S Types are out there in chassis number alone hiding as Cobra’s, Kougars and other kit cars.
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