The General Directorate of Traffic (DGT) has designed a reform of the regulations to classify a vehicle as historic in order to encourage the process and facilitate the conservation of the automotive cultural and industrial heritage. The measure that Traffic has proposed to incorporate in the draft of the new Historic Vehicle Regulation that could be approved in the autumn, will streamline bureaucracy and lower costs.
In this way, of the 800 euros that it currently costs to register your car as historic, it would go to a rate of between 80 and 90 euros, as explained by the deputy director of Regulations of the DGT, Francisco de las Alas Pumairiño, to the Efe agency. The fundamental requirement to catalog a vehicle in this way is that it is more than 30 years old.
Behind the Traffic decision there is an interest in renewing a rule that dates back to 1995 and that is so complex that it does not encourage Spaniards to start the procedures to be able to keep the car as a vehicle of historical interest. The DGT does not agree that Spain only has 48,000 cars classified as historic compared to the calculations of the body itself, which estimates that there are some 150,000 vehicles more likely to become so.
Compared to other countries, the figures that Spain presents in this regard are also derisory. In Germany, 600,000 vehicles are classified as historic and in the United Kingdom the figure rises to 1.5 million copies.
Traffic intends with the reform of the regulations to avoid the loss or departure of historic vehicles outside the national territory and to establish a regulation similar to that currently in place in other countries of the European Union. The new regulation will also regulate the possibility of driving historic vehicles on urban roads where circulation restrictions are established for environmental reasons, in order to “facilitate their use and, consequently, their conservation,” according to De las Alas.
The new Regulation will introduce two different procedures to classify a car as historic. Two groups will be established based on their origin.
Vehicles registered in Spain will not have to have a specific license plate, but may keep the one they have due to its historical value. In this way, confusion will be avoided, since in some cases the cars kept both license plates -the original and the historical one- and, for example, some have been denounced for not having compulsory insurance, depending on the license plate that the agent noted. , and it did have it because it was attached to the other license plate.
Another novelty is that it will only be necessary to make a change of service, that is, go to the administration and ask that the car become “historical service” and that you want to keep the license plate. A new permit will be issued for these conditions and, in short, it will be a simple procedure that costs you just 28 euros. And when it is your turn to pass the ITV, the owner will report this change of service and a periodicity of revision will be imposed, always every more year than ordinary vehicles.
The procedures to classify imported vehicles that lack Spanish documentation or are semi-abandoned as historic will have to undergo an inspection to examine all their parts and verify their limitations. Then they will have to follow the rest of the procedures.
