if i buy my car from a dealer who is miles away can i arrange for the car to be registered with my local licensing office so i get a local reg prefix ? i want a proper nothern reg and not a poncy southern one !!!

Maybe, if your dealer/broker was nice they could order a v55 from Skoda UK and register/tax the car at the relevant DVLA office, but I guess they won't be able to afford the time or fuel for the journey after all the discount you'll have had:P

cheeky !

its about 185 miles so not that practical. i dont understand how it works. can they not just apply to my local office to register the car via the post ?

Could do it via post I suppose. The supplying dealer has a DVLA link callded AFRL, Automated First Registration & Licencing, which is sort of managed by the local DVLA branch. The computer system allocates the vehicle a registration number and once insurance has been verified by the dealer, the system instructs the dealer to complete and issue the tax disc.

The only way round this is to use the manual method. I've done it in the past when supplying cars to Northern Ireland.

The dealer requests the correct papers from the manufacturer and the customer insures the vehicle on its chassis number rather than the reg number. The DVLA office then issue the tax disc with a local reg. It's a lot of messing about just to get a local number. Why don't you buy a local reg from the DVLA and have your initials or something as the last 3 letters.

for example, my local DVLA office is Preston, so you could have P?58 JCB, which is £399.

I asked about doing this last year when I bought the SE (looking for a cheeky "WK" reg) but the dealer said he had to use one of the local ones he was given.

mind you, he did give me the choice out of the dozen or so he had.