[sabinesnubbing]

Karlosdeville,
Interesting about the Beetle. I am not great on old African numbers but M as the first letter is not normal I think. I have just checked and MZY was not a S. Africa or Rhodesia code. Any idea where in Africa?
I have MZY as about 1979 Maharashtra in my list so that cannot be right as you say.
Cheers
Cedric

[karlosdeville]

Originally Posted by sabinesnubbing

Karlosdeville,
Interesting about the Beetle. I am not great on old African numbers but M as the first letter is not normal I think. I have just checked and MZY was not a S. Africa or Rhodesia code. Any idea where in Africa?
I have MZY as about 1979 Maharashtra in my list so that cannot be right as you say.
Cheers
Cedric

Unfortunately my car has gone through at least 4 registered owners since 67, so previous history really isnt known. The last person simply told me the car was brought from Africa by the first owner in book, under whose name it is registered in 1967. The old number is also dated as sometime in Jan 56 or 58, it is not legible enough. Ill try and get the scan to post here soon.

[harit]

Originally Posted by karlosdeville

Unfortunately my car has gone through at least 4 registered owners since 67, so previous history really isnt known. The last person simply told me the car was brought from Africa by the first owner in book, under whose name it is registered in 1967. The old number is also dated as sometime in Jan 56 or 58, it is not legible enough. Ill try and get the scan to post here soon.

Most of the cars imported from Africa were in fact from East Africa, i.e. Kenya, Tanzania or Uganda. And probably this car was light green in colour at one point of time, lying at Darabsha road off Nepean Sea Road. There was such a Beetle in the lane of my school. As far as I remember it had a EAK or so plague at the rear, so probably Kenya. There was hardly any movement from S. Africa or Rhodesia at that time, they were still practicing apartheid!

[karlosdeville]

Originally Posted by harit

Most of the cars imported from Africa were in fact from East Africa, i.e. Kenya, Tanzania or Uganda. And probably this car was light green in colour at one point of time, lying at Darabsha road off Nepean Sea Road. There was such a Beetle in the lane of my school. As far as I remember it had a EAK or so plague at the rear, so probably Kenya. There was hardly any movement from S. Africa or Rhodesia at that time, they were still practicing apartheid!

When we scraped the paint we found a black coat and finally a powder blue, no green. Many Oval windowed Beetles did come, about half a dozen survive (to my knowledge). As far as I know mine is the oldest VW in India, I would be only to happy to be corrected.

[sabinesnubbing]

Gents,
In that case, it is a Tanganyika registration apparently (I checked on our website) and MZa-z were from Mwanza (the region). All private Uganda plates started with U and all private Kenya plates started with K.
I am not able to put any sort of date on MZY as the series ran from 1933 to 1961 I believe.
Cheers
Cedric

[karlosdeville]

Originally Posted by sabinesnubbing

Gents,
In that case, it is a Tanganyika registration apparently (I checked on our website) and MZa-z were from Mwanza (the region). All private Uganda plates started with U and all private Kenya plates started with K.
I am not able to put any sort of date on MZY as the series ran from 1933 to 1961 I believe.
Cheers
Cedric

Wow, thats interesting, thanks very much. So I assume the car was brought into India only in 67 then. Here are the scans. Can anyone clearly decipher the date of the old number?

Also there is an official entry for change of engine, but the number only differs by one digit. A mistake while entering it initially perhaps?

[kreddy]

Gentlemen,

Just went through this interesting post, I will give some facts pertaining to Karnataka. I remember registration numbers intially were like MYB (MYsore state Bangalore district), MYM(Mysore District), MYT (Tumkur Dist), MYK(Kolar Dist) and so on. Later I remember seeing numbers like MEB,MES,MET,etc.,

Later in 1974 when Mysore state was renamed as Karnataka, Government was in a fix as K series was already used by Kerala. So they went for C series (Carnataka) and sequence like CAP,CAM,CAB and others started. In fact then Chief Minister late Mr.Gundu Rao had proposed changing the spelling Of Karnataka to Carnataka to accomodate this. Fortunately sanity prevailed and it was dropped. Then came present numbering system.

[Stanher]

Originally Posted by karlosdeville

As far as I know mine is the oldest VW in India, I would be only to happy to be corrected.

Um, Karl, if I remember right, you had once mentioned of just one splitscreen you know of in India?

As for the number, a search on google shows that Mwanza is in Tanzania (where, incidentally my mom had worked for a while until recently! )

Mwanza Region - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In her photos from her stay there, I could find relatively few cars, and hardly any old cars other than Land Rovers though. I guess they weren't known to have many cars there?

[karlosdeville]

Originally Posted by Stanher

Um, Karl, if I remember right, you had once mentioned of just one splitscreen you know of in India?

Well a couple of people have told me they have seen one in Goa. One fellow said it was white, one fellow said black, one fellow said dark blue - nobody could give me exact location, nobody could give me photos, nobody could give me regn number, so I am skeptical. I'd be only too happy to know if it does indeed exist.

[harit]

This registration is a classic example how we can share inputs and come to some result. So in all probability Karl's car had a Tanzanian origin (before that ofcourse German). Tanganyika became Tanzania. The pointer to East Africa guided Sabinesnubbing to look in the right direction.

As for the cars in that area, well European cars were common before the Japaneese pushed them out. They had hell of a lot of VW's, old Safari pictures will show a lot of busses. Then there were Peugeots, Land Rovers, Mercedes, and what not. One of our school teachers who had to flee from Uganda had to leave her family's Alfa Romeo behind. So East Africa did have normal good cars around. A couple of good fintail Mercs also came to India from Africa, example the black one in Hyderabad and grey in Kerala.

[karlosdeville]

Cedric, would you be able to tell us the colour and style of that plate? A picture of a similar plate would be great.

[Stanher]

Originally Posted by karlosdeville

I'd be only too happy to know if it does indeed exist.

So would I......for obvious reasons!

Originally Posted by harit

As for the cars in that area, well European cars were common before the Japaneese pushed them out. They had hell of a lot of VW's, old Safari pictures will show a lot of busses. Then there were Peugeots, Land Rovers, Mercedes, and what not. So East Africa did have normal good cars around.

Yes, I do agree, harit. East Africa (viz. Kenya especially) did have a fair amount of Euro/Brit cars. I remember seeing an old B/W video of Kenya in the 60s once, showing Beetles, Ford Anglias etc.
I was referring to Tanzania alone in my last post.

[trrk]

Hi,

Originally Posted by karlosdeville

Also there is an official entry for change of engine, but the number only differs by one digit. A mistake while entering it initially perhaps?

The red lettered word under the circled number says 'corrected' and so the initial entry must have been a mistake!

Originally Posted by karlosdeville

Can anyone clearly decipher the date of the old number?

If the initial stroke of the ist digit of the date can be ignored, it looks like 18/01/58 to me.

[sabinesnubbing]

Gents,
I also think the date is probably 18.1.58.
As for the style of plate, it was very British, silver on black (unpainted numbers/letters) and with the letters the same size as the numbers. Only British India liked the letters smaller than the numbers. All the other colonies etc had plates that were indistinguisable from (in country) UK numbers.
I don't keep the records for Africa (except North Africa) but will get a picture and post it here later.

As for beetles in Goa, I have looked in my collection and there is this one. I am useless at VW dates but I think it's an older one. Too old? Too new?
I got the picture somewhere on Team-BHP.
Cheers
Cedric

[sabinesnubbing]

Gents,
I have managed to get one picture of a typical Tanganyika plate. It is made on a British supplied machine and could actually be a UK number. However we know this one is TD for Dar Es Salaam. I don't believe we have any MZ pictures.
Cheers
Cedric