DEMONSTRATION PLATES

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22467, 30 July 1938, Page 5

DEMONSTRATION PLATES

“SOLELY FOR BUSINESS PURPOSES” MAGISTRATE’S DECISION That demonstration registration plates were designed solely to expedite a motor dealer’s business during his hours of business and were not to be used by salesmen who took out cars for their own pleasure was a ruling given by Mr F, F. Reid, S.M., in the Magistrate’s Court yesterday morning, when Eric George Walker appeared on charges of driving a car without the .assigned marks and numbers, and without a warrant of fitness. A further charge of driving an unlicensed car was withdrawn. In evidence, Inspector H. Martin said that he had seen the defendant driving the car on the Summit road on a Sunday and had thought that it was unusual for a car to be carrying demonstration plates on a Sunday. The defendant had a woman and two children in the car and was obviously on a pleasure drive. If he was not it amounted to Sunday trading. Walker said that he was a car salesman employed by Blackwell Motors, Ltd. It was a common practice for salesmen to drive cars with demonstration plates .for their own pleasure. The car was a second-hand one and he was not covered by insurance if he drove it without demonstration plates as the registration papers were made out in the name of the previous owner. The warrant of fitness had been made out by the service manager at Blackwell Motors, Ltd., said Constable Jones, but the owner’s name and the registered number of the car were omitted. The warrant was therefore not valid. The Magistrate said that it was one thing for a salesman to take a car home at night to enable him to get out early after a prospect in the morning, and a totally different thing to use the car for pleasure. He accepted the defendant's statement that it was a common practice for salesmen to use cars carrying demonstration plates for pleasure, but that was a practice that they carried out at their own risk. No vehicle was allowed to go on the road unless a warrant of fitness certificate had been issued for that vehicle. It was not enough to say that the car was worthy of a certificate. It should not be difficult to make out a certificate with the car's registered number and with Blackwell Motors, Ltd.,* named as the owner. On the first charge Walker was fined 10s and ordered to pay costs, the Magistrate remarking that his fellow salesmen might help him pay the fine, and on the second charge of having no warrant of fitness he was ordered to pay costs.