Tracing the history of NNF 10H
The first task was to obtain a heritage certificate from the Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust, which contains details from the original hand-written records taken by Jaguar during the production of the vehicle. The purpose was mainly to confirm the original numbers for the body, engine, gearbox etc but it also includes other useful information such the selling dealer, first keeper and colour scheme.

The JDHT Certificate duly arrived and, on a positive note, confirmed that all the numbers matched. Due to the passage of time and the corrosive nature of our UK climate, the chassis plate had deteriorated to such an extent that it was not feasible to put back on the car. However I didn’t want to lose this identity of the car so decided the best solution was to mount the plate in a picture frame. The best replacement chassis plates I could source were from Classic Jaguar in the USA as the font and spacing were identical to the original Jaguar plates. Two new plates were ordered, one for the car and the second to be mounted in a frame with the original plate and the JDHT certificate.

The next exercise was to attempt to piece together the history of the car from its registration date on 1st January 1970. Details of the previous owners can be obtained from the DVLA by submitting a V888 form and paying a nominal sum of £5.

The DVLA are able to provide copies of the historical V5 vehicle registration documents and notifications of sale or transfer. However the DVLA records were only computerised onto a centralised system in 1974. The ‘old-type’ logbooks were recalled from the de-centralised Local Council and Registration Offices for conversion to the new DVLA system. Unfortunately only a continuation logbook was received for NNF 10H in 1976 so they were unable to fully account for the period from 1970 to 1975. The first and second owner names appear on the JDHT Certificate. Hopefully, this may account for the whole or majority of this period.

The JDHT Certificate shows that the car was first registered in Manchester and so the vehicle registration would have been allocated to the Manchester County Borough Council. Unfortunately the Manchester Archives department, in their infinite wisdom, apprasied their archive collection covering 1968-1974 and decided to destroy them and there are no other surviving vehicle registration records known to be held elsewhere. I think the tracing of the car’s history will be an on-going process when time and enthusiasm permit.

I have been able to trace several of the early owners thanks to Google and other internet search engines, without which it would have been a pointless exercise. One of the early keepers still had a picture, taken in the 70s, and it was interesting to note that it had solid wheels at this point in time. I’m not sure if the factory supplied it with solid wheels. However they had subsequently reverted back to wire wheels. This would explain why the rear hub carriers are not correct for the E-Type.

From what I can ascertain, the car fell into being passed around the ‘used car’ dealer network as early as the late 70’s, by which time it had covered the majority of the current 64,160 registered miles. Much of its latter life seems to have been spent languishing in car dealers’ stock with little mileage added, assuming nothing untoward in the clocking department!

Registered Keeper	Area	Acquired Vehicle	Comments
Mr F A Welch	Hale Barns, Cheshire	1st January 1970
Mr A E R Alton	Derby	Not known
Derek Morris	Oxford	25th July 1975	Owner traced
	16th July 1976
Steve Malins	Dunmow, Essex	22nd April 1977	Owner traced
	28th July 1977	28th July 1978
Thomas Atkinson	Ingatestone, Essex	14th August 1978	Car dealer
	22nd March 1980
Robert MacLoughlin	London, N21	1st December 1984	Possibly Robert MacLoughlin Automobiles
Classic Auto of London	London, SW18	2nd September 1985	Car dealer
	9th Nov 1985
Steve Butler	Loughton, Essex	31st May 1991
	10th June 1991
Charles Leigh	London, SW7	28th August 1991
	11th June 1992	8th January 1994
Chris Vine	Windsor, Berkshire	17th August 1995	Current owner