[TR] Narrowing in on a lost commission number

[JOHN MACARTNEY]

Very interesting. Thanks for the rundown on CKD cars.  Excuse me but  what is SKD?  


Semi knocked down. In this case, certain parts of the car were assembled in Coventry with the balance being fitted at the overseas assembly plant from locally sourced componentry.

I am going to say that CT5521LO is indeed that with no 1  before the commission #.  The plate has the appearance of being original to  the car. The Heritage Certificate says "Dispatched to Belgium". I received  a letter of apology from them referring to the car as CKD with no body #  recorded. 

As I think I may have said in an earlier post, BMIHT has no details of CKD and SKD shipments.

 The story behind the original owner was that he was a USA serviceman  serving overseas and the car was shipped from Belgium to Florida, USA for the  Tax advantages. Any truth to that?

I think that probably the more likely case is that he was a Serviceman based in Germany which was one of the founding states of the European Economic community. At the time of the TR4, the UK was not a member state as it is now. Ergo, he would have been able to buy a tax-free car in Germany (all forces of occupying countries got a tax free facility - apart from the Russians!) to effectively the same spec with the possible exception that its speedo would have been in kilometres but that's easy to change. Without doubt, it would have arrived in the US with its US forces licence plate (German issue) and this would definitely have classified it as used with lower than usual US import duty. Of course, being a TR4, it was before US safety standards kicked in and the car would have had the crankcase breather as I think they all did by that time.

Cheers, Jonmac