Hey All,

I'm wondering if anybody knows of some kind of resource(s) (hopefully web-accessible?) whereby I could trace the ownership and milage history of my old betsy based on the VIN. My odometer quite working who knows how long before I got the car, so I'd like to try to get at least an estimate on how much overall milage she has on 'er. It would also be kinda neat to try to trace ownership history and location through the years also. When I got 'er, there was an old Canadian medalion screwed into the grill.

Thanks Mates!!

Have you tried CarFax?
You can get some info on that, although probably not nearly as complete
as you'd like.
--
George Downs, Bartlesville, Oklahoma, Central US

Just a stab in the dark, but some classic car magazines have 'lost and found' columns, or may even let you put a photo in, with a request for previous owners to contact you. But beware, you may get unwelcome replies from people who just like the look of the car.

Here in UK, it is possible to contact the local authority of the district who first imported the car, guessable from the license plate. For example one beginning NDV will be Devon. THey may tell you the first owner, but as said before, the middle owners are something of a mystery.

Tom

As Matt stated, there is no central registry for vintage Volvos. My Amazon's PO (previous owner) did supply me with his 25 years of ownership records. My most prized material is a letter from Volvo in 1975, stating that my car rolled off the assembly line on April 12th, 1960. Volvo admitted they only kept sparse, hand written records back then. There was no indication of when it was imported into Canada, or who originally bought it.

In my Canadian province (Ontario), our vehicle registry will allow you to do a V.I.N. title search that indicates the immediate history, what the car last sold for and any other pertinent information, including names (and addresses?). What is the Canadian badge on your grill and do you know if this is a Canadian car?

I was extemely more fortunate with my PV444. I had the annual vehicle inspection papers from the mid-60s and the original owner's name and sales draft. I have the annual inspection circular proofs of certification that span from 1954 to 1992, when it was imported into Canada. These are stored in a compartment behind the driver's side sun visor. I'm still trying to track down the owner from the mid-60s from Linköping, Sweden.
--
Cam a.k.a. CVOLVO.COM

All I know about the badge is that it came with the mashed in grill that I bought the car with. I have since done some restoration and replaced the grill, but I kept the badge. It's about three to four inches wide, in the shape of a shield, and has a kind of crown stampted into the chromed metal at the top. While I was at the last IPD lot-sale, I saw some badges quite like this one. One of them was nearly identical and said "Svenske", wich I kind of assumed ment "Sweden".

As for wheather that badge was authentic or added on later, I would have no idea. Does each province in Canada offer this VIN search service? If I sent you my VIN#, perhaps you could search for it? It would be nice at the very least to nail down it's first provenance and first PO.

Thanks!

Unfortunately, I don't think there is such a recource out there. Especially for a Volvo. Any previous ownership records are held by the state, and not available to the public.

You probably don't have them, but the service records would be your best bet. They would contain owners names and the like, and you'd then have to contact them.

I've tried to trace the ownership records of my old Jag, and got only as far as two owners back. And he didn't want to talk... THe best I can do with that car is find the original importer, and *maybe* the original owner, but nothing in between. And Jaguar keeps about the best archives of any manufacturer in the world.

Your best bet in my opinion is to take a careful look at the parts you replace... you can estimate mileage by determining if said parts have been replaced. For instance, lower A-arm bushings are good for 150-250k miles. If you pull yours because they are bad, and you can identify that they ain't original... you can speculate that your car has 300k+. Of course, that would be very dependent on the cars history, so it sure ain't accurate, but its enough to give you an idea.

Good luck!
-Matt
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-Matt '70 145s, '65 1800s, '66 122s wagon, others inc. '53 XK120 FHC