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
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