NCT - what are they up to....

Took the 523i in for its first test this week.  Slightly surprised (but pleased nonetheless) that it sailed through, but wasn't going to tell them I thought a track control arm and maybe a rear ball joint might be past their best!

The surprising thing though is that the car was first registered in the UK in August and registered here in Feb this year.  The new ticket is up to Feb 2012.  That doesn't make sense to me.  To my mind it should be up to August this year (tested a little too soon to get me to Aug 2011 - by August 2010 it will have passed the start date for annual testing of 10+ y/o cars).  Am I missing something?  Again, wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth, but its not what I expected.

In the early days of the NCT the first ticket was always issued for two years from first reg in Ireland and then a few years ago they changed it so that it slotted in with the original registration date so the ticket was invariably for less than 2 years.  What has changed?

Also, after I got the reg doc I went to the local NCT centre to get it on to their system so that I could book a test and was told that they already had the record of it.  They used to get records from Shannon in the early days but then they stopped that and you had to bring the car to them before you could book a test.

It seems like that since the new providors took over at the start of the year, the rules have reverted to those that were there at the very start of the NCT 10 years ago.

Anyone got an insight?

Sisters car went in last week, 3 months past it's due date and she got a full 2 years from day of test. I'm guessing the two categories are Jap and non-Jap imports, i.e whether it was imported to the U.K from Japan before being imported here. Not sure on that though.

Dergside wrote: Took the 523i in for its first test this week.  Slightly surprised (but pleased nonetheless) that it sailed through,

As I said, slightly surprised that it passed as I felt there was something amiss.  Took a run up to my favourite specialt on Saturday to have him poke around it.  The are a few ARB links and bushes that need replacing.  The amount of play was incredible.  How it got through the test I don't know.  Should have failed without question.  Makes you think, when you couple this with the various experiences of being failed for relatively trivial issues.