How to find car history?

[ggdtr5]

Hi there,

I have a 230sl and I am trying to find out a bit of history on the car namely when it was first registered - in Germany.
The car was advertised as a 1967 model, it was bought in Germany in 1974 by an American and exported to United States, the American title shows it as a 1967 car however, I have a copy of the original data sheet and using the information on this website I.e box 'e' of the data sheet it has a code of 32620580 which shows it being manufactured in 1963, and supplied to a dealer in lueg Bochum, Germany. The despatch date on the data sheet is the 23rd march 1964.
It seems odd to me that the car is being quoted as a 1967 model, it is clearly an earlier model.
I am about to apply to DVLA here in UK to get the car registered and I want to get the correct date.

Is there any way I can find out when the car was first registered in Germany?

Regards Graham

[Jowe]

Hi Graham,

I guess your chassis number is around 113-042-1x-002400 if it was dispatched on March 23 1964. You can actually estimate quiet good when your car is manufactured by looking in Pagoda Notes Volume 10 Issue 1 in the full member section in the Technical Manual on this site. Since your car initially was delivered to a (West-) German dealer, I guess it was regitered about a week or so after factory dispatch.

[ggdtr5]

Hi Jowe

My chassis number is 002705 and I was also assuming the car would have been registered a few weeks after the delivery date of 23rd march 1964 therefore it cannot be a 1967 model. Somewhere along the line the wrong date has been recorded.
In the U.K. you can apply to DVLA and get a record of the owners and when the car was first registered I wonder if there is such a system in Germany?

[WRe]

Hi,
car registration in Germany is done by the Kraftfahrtbundesamt (KBA: http://www.kba.de/EN/Home/home_node.html).
But afaik all data will be erased when the car is not registered in Germany for more than 7 years. I would contact the dealer who sold the car, maybe he has some old records (http://www.lueg.de).
...WRe