Following on from digging I did for Konaboy's thread. "The following vehicles were made before the end of Dec 1972, and qualify for historic vehicle class with free road tax (at the moment!) :- Buses up to 2*32102496 (where * is a single digit representing the model type)." Hopefully this instant answer will save some of you a wasted £40 on a birthday certificate from vw. A bit more info. 2 means it's a Type 2 * is for body style - panelvan, microbus etc 3 is 73 year model, which they started making in 1972 (August?) 2 is so you don't think it's 1963 The next 6 are serial numbers. By the end of 1972 they'd made 102496 so if your last six are a lower number, your van was made in 72.
That means that 15,000 buses were made in the first 18 days of January 1973 (my serial number is 117-something-something-something) - what did they have for Christmas lunch, rocket fuel????
Karma for this zed. Was told that my bus was a 74 but had no way of confirming it 'til now (V5C shows first registration as 1983). Would be nice to know if it was however built in 1973 as it it would mean its tax exempt next year
