DVLA/SMMT make & model code

[billyjowett]

ok, probably in the wrong place but.
just got off the phone to dvla.
in my v5 the make and model are on the same line. when i do a check (or insurance company) on the computer it comes up as unknown if you only enter jowett as the make
this has caused me hassle already (don't ask)
when the DVLA went from the brown to the new v5's the entered all the details by hand, now to get the dvla to chance this they need a smmt code(?)
apparently if it had been spotted at the time it would have been easy, but the new system wont allow it!!
does anyone know antthing about this? HELP!!!!
(to err is human, to really foul things up takes a computer!!)

[Nick Webster]

Don't worry about it. There are umpteen Jowetts out there that are like this. It is not only Jowetts that are affected which is what makes a mockery of DVLA searches and almost certainly the figures that are sometimes circulated where people marvel at how few of a particular model remain. There would be more if they were listed correctly. About 6 years ago I had two reclaimed registrations for a couple of vehicles in my collection and went back in both cases to point out errors. These were duly corrected but the one they declined to correct was the make and model (and in one case the chassis type) all included on the same line. There is some good technical reason for this though for the owner it is a tad annoying. I think there is something regarding the minimum number and format of digits required to be entered in the DVLA entry fields, that a chassis number of say "60" will not satisfy. This is where the SMMT code comes in. Basically you don't have one and never will. So they get round it in a way that looks odd to us but DVLA are quite happy with it. I have never had any problem with car insurance regarding any description oddities and most good classic insurance folk are aware and understanding of the problem.

Nick Webster

[billyjowett]

WELL, yea, i kind of get it the dvla need the smmt codes to sort it out, but if it's that darn hard for them how come not every jowett/classic/vintage car is miss labled?
it must be possable, a mate of mine (now sadly decesed) was a programmer there in the '80. i think too many of them are data entry clerks now.
moan over sorry, but i've also been onto smmt's website, i wonder what they'll say

[Keith Clements]

Making any change to a computer program that has a few 100 million records to process is not something lightly undertaken. One has to remember that some of these programs were written when computers were still driven by valves and had the processing power of a nat and stored their data on magnetic tapes which had to be accessed serially. The first iteration of the Jowett Car Club's membership list was just as primitive being designed around punched cards with 80 columns of simple 8 bit characters. This was transposed to an early form of small computer in 1976, then onto the first personal computer in 1980 using 8 inch flexible disks for storage of both the program and the data. Each disk held 250kB (250000 x8 bits) of data. Consider now when a phone has 64,000,000,000 x 8 bits or more in its memory.