It took 13 years to notice my invalid vehicle registration certificate!

In 2014 we bought a car1, registered in my name. It’s a little long in the tooth now and we’re thinking about what might replace it, but for the time being it’s a useful workhorse and especially valuable when we need to move the entire family and still have space for luggage. This large car was super helpful for a trip to France via the Channel Tunnel earlier this summer… at least, once I’d hacked Le Shuttle’s API to work around their inability to cope with us bringing home different adults than we took on the outbound leg! This week, I renewed my driving license2. While doing so, I was invited to connect the records of the vehicles I own. This would allow, for example, email notifications when my Vehicle Excise Duty is due on them. How to register a car “wrong” The newer of our two cars was easy to add: I provided the number plate; the website did some kind of lookup; and it was done. But when I tried to add the older car, I got an error message: I’d have probably just treated this…