"Greg Hennessy" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 20 Feb 2004 01:20:32 -0000, "Dave Liney" wrote:

You seem to have missed the point that the twice yearly changeover has
nothing to do with the new system but was already in place before it was
introduced.

Which was an attempt to smooth over august sales peak caused by the suffix
changed being moved there from January.
Are you suggesting that said movement of the yearly identifying mark and
the resulting distortion on sales had nothing to do with the motor
industry?

The move of the suffix to August did not cause the sales peak. There had
been one when the changeover was in January and the changeover month was
moved to a time when the demand for new cars could more easily be met. The
distortion of sales was caused by the government's introduction of the
yearly indentifier; nothing to do with the motor industry.

There was no change in the time of identifier change with the
introduction of the new system.

Proof if any was needed of the current dogs breakfast. If one is going to
introduce a completely new system and encode a yearly identifying mark,
changing it every 6 months is just silly.

What is encoded is a six monthly id mark. Changing that every six months
makes sense to me.

If you actually read what I had posted you would have realised that I
said
that the car industry does not want the changeover at 12 months or 6
months,

That would be the car industry who persuaded the govt to move the suffix
change from Jan to Aug in the Mid 60s, and then whinged even more to get a
twice yearly change due to the distorting effects that change had on the
market.

They asked the government to move the changeover month, which happened in
1967. However this was in response to the government bring in the year
identifier in in 1963, which was not of the motor industry's doing. They
were trying to make the best of a bad situation.

Do you really think that people didn't want to show they had a new car by
getting one right after the changeover in January, but when it changed in
August they suddenly did?

they would rather have a continuous series.

The registration system doesn't exist for the benefit of the car industry.

What do you want? Half the time you are saying there should be a continuous
series and then you say it would be terrible to do it because the motor
industry would prefer it.

Dave