Replicated Historic Vehicles in Australia.
 

Registration for road use of Cobra, GT40, Daytona replica, kit car ICV or any other derivative in these categories has been a huge and costly burden to overcome in OZ generally.
The different states have their own rules and requirements which make the sale of these cars unattractive to interstate potential purchasers.
To resolve these problems, the Cobra Car Club of South Australia (inc in1993) has been lobbying the Dept of Transport to change the present arrangement and requirements for road use registration to a less restrictive scheme such as that enjoyed by the Street Rod and historic veh. sector.
The current state government had previously announced a policy of "reducing red tape" and on July 1st this did occur with historic vehicles being allowed modifications that enhanced safety and comfort etc.
Following a meeting with the Transport Minister of SA at a public event to celebrate the above changes the club was invited to meet with ministerial staff to discuss changes to the procedures currently in place.
Meeting with the ministers officers has resulted in a draft for the creating of a new category of vehicles and therefor the rules necessary to govern same.
The club, with the assistance of ministerial staff, needs to create the categories, build guidelines eligibility etc. etc in the same way that occurred with the Street Rod documentation.
It is planned to create a national agreement between the states and enjoy the option of full or club registration that would be recognised by all involved.
That was a great step forward and I publicly congratulate the minister and his staff for taking this visionary step.
To enable the above to start happening we need to establish a national structure and input and information streams from interested parties in other states.
That's enough for now. Have a think and let me know.

Great work John, that sounds so positive I hope we can get to that level of compliance for all ICV's nationally - what a dream outcome that would be.

No flies on you Wil, first cab off the rank.
Believe me, I don't underestimate the size of the task, but its the ministers office that wants a national system and will work with the states on that if we can do our bit.
The first step is to create a working party that represents all states and their input. Then we need to identify by year a timeframe this scheme will cover. Just like the street rod scheme does.
Then we need to produce a document that itemises the build options and processes, just like the street rods do.
Armed with this document, it is expected that ministerial staff will liaise with State Govs for implementation.
We are looking to start an interest group within who will contribute to the production of the build bible and I can say that a YES has been received from two engineers already;)

And a YES from me in NSW (Nanny State Wales).

Pinch me and tell me I'm not dreaming...
On behalf of all I'd like to thank you for all your work on this to date.

Cool! Best wishes for your effort. With 50 states here we would never get such cooperation. Even sema can't get the job done uniformly.

That's great John! I know of only a small portion of the huge amount of time and effort you've put in on getting this rolling, and from my point of view, it will benefit me significantly. Many thanks, and if there is any input that I can contribute, you know where I am.

Cheers,
Glen

Cant thank you enough John... well done.. fingers crossed its able to be developed then rolled out without consistent with the identified strategy in a reasonable timeframe... :)

Chris

Well done.

Thanks to you all for your support and thank you Treeve as I was hoping you would get involved as NSW seems to have some unique obstacles to registering ICVs
A starting point would to create a definition of Historic Vehicle Replica. This could be:

1. Specific makes/models/years itemised.
2. All makes all models in specified year or year range. ie 1950 - 1979.
3. Restrictions if any on race only cars.

This aspect has to be nailed down so comments, desires can be debated and addressed.

I totally agree .. The RMS is completely bureaucratic so getting an agreement out of that lot will be a major task. I think the minister for transport is a bit out of touch as well. Last friday I heard him spruiking about a 1000 kph train for NSW . I wonder if he knows what the land speed record is.

Congratulations on making some positive first steps towards a national solution.

just dreamin,

From the peanut gallery...
Sounds like great work! You mention related Street Rod and historic vehicle sector achievements, and a first step of creating a representative working party. You’re probably way ahead on this thought, but any chance of including a recognized/respected contributor from the Street Rod or historic vehicle sector efforts in the current working party, if still around? Possible useful input, guidance, and respect among the various parties, or at least reflect the sincerity of the effort to make this work to the agency(ies). Perhaps they’d have insights into overcoming concerns and meeting the agency(ies) standards/objectives (written and otherwise). At any rate…best of luck! Brent

John, that is outstanding. Long way to go but a starts a start. Happy to try and be of use to you in QLD if it helps. Its a great idea and I'd love to see ALL manufacturers as well as owner builders unite on this front as well as its for the greater good of their clients and or owner builder.

In fact, its topics like these I'd love to see vented at a forum at the Cobra Nationals. It could be like hearding cats I know but as a "National" event it'd be great to have a speaker advise whats trying to be done again for the greater good of the cobra community. Just my 2 Bobs worth.

My advice for the definition:
Keep it simple, and from preference, use another piece of already accepted legislation. A neat example is this one:
The Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development (DIRD, previously DoTaRs)
https://infrastructure.gov.au/vehicl...les/0-2-13.pdf
Definition:
"6.3 Replica: A vehicle that has a similar Make and/or Model name and/or the
appearance of another Model in order to gain a marketing position based on that
similarity. Typical examples are “AC Cobra”, “Lotus Seven” and “Jaguar XJ13”."

This keeps things simple for the definition as it allows you to build pretty much any vehicle as a replica.

Then use your state's Historical Registration Scheme to determine the age of something that you can build a replica of, for example, in NSW it's 30 years:

http://www.rms.nsw.gov.au/documents/...eclaration.pdf

So if a vehicle is >30 years old, and passes a silhouette test (i.e. similar in appearance) then it's a replica.

South Australia has a similar scheme but doesn't have a 'rolling 30 years' it has a fixed date:

https://www.sa.gov.au/topics/driving...l-registration

The fixed date is 01/01/1979.

Don't get bogged down in 'period authentic' rubbish otherwise we'll have to build exact copies - you need the freedom to change the chassis to make them stiffer for decent suspension, you need to be able to use readily available parts (i.e. engine, gearbox, hubs, brakes).

So, my advice is summarised:

1. Use pre-existing legislation
2. Keep it simple

If anything, I would suggest the 'rolling 30 years' vs the 'fixed date' approach, but as this is in your state, I would recommend using your own state's legislated date as a good start point, then push to get that changed to a rolling 30 years in place of the fixed date.

Treeve

Good advice Treeve. I believe South Australia is finally moving to the rolling 30 year criterion ....there's a State election not far off, so the State government might be more likely to have open minds :rolleyes:

Cheers,
Glen

Thanks again to all contributor.

EM-0785 Excellent suggestion, BUT as I have been promoting this subject formally with the relevant authorities in SA for the past 14 tears, sorry I meant years, I have had dialog with street rod and street machine (modified) vehicles representatives. Each have their specified regulations and one group considered our representations to the authorities as potentially undermining and threatening their existing and generous concessions. Therefor they were not leaping to assist.

Spook, good to talk again. The nationals thing is a good idea, BUT, as you may know Bruce and I have been to almost every nationals since 1993. On a couple of these trips, (13 hour drives) we have advised we were keen to debate the subject with all interested members from the other states. Unfortunately no one came forward.

Treeve, Great stuff and I like your summary, BUT, I am not driving the format or procures to make this happen. Therefor I am hoping ministerial staff will get up to speed on the subject matter and assist in the production of documentation.
The SA club has no staff or clerical facilities to assist in this exercise so its do what is doable and hope that Kit suppliers, engineers etc etc want to be involved in the near future.
I would like to involve all the suppliers in the information loop so that we can all speak as one voice (love those cliché) so to get their involvement I need you to tell them and all others that may be interested to make contact and get involved.
If that doesn't happen then the first documentation may become the template for other states without their input.
Apart from above I will communicate with some people off line,like you, as its not all relevant for public forums.

Not a problem at all. My thoughts here though, are to help them out by giving them a gentle nudge and by pointing out that they don't have to reinvent the wheel. If you talk to most government employees (hell, even non-govco employees) they're all over-worked. If you can give them a few easy to follow pointers like what I've done so they can look like they've already got a cohesive plan for little effort, they'll go for it. Same with me - if you can show me a simpler way to do a job neatly and with minimal fuss - I'm all for it. Efficiency is the name of the game.

Treeve

That would need a hell of a bull bar.Imaging hitting a roo at that speed.:eek:
JD