What happens if:

You bought an incomplete car from a manufacturer now defunct (not MGRover..). The car was started to be built 15 years ago and actually has a manufacturers VIN/chassis number which dates it as 1994. Never finished (in fact its just a body and chassis), so will have to be finished with reconned parts and some new where possible.
I know one other similar car which was comleted (with new parts) and SVA'd - but this was 10 years ago. It wears a T plate.

What would "this" car end up with (in terms of plate), and is IVA the only way forward?

IVA and a Q-plate I would reckon.

There's a form you can get from the DVLA website that specifies what you need to do to get an age related plate. Normally, if you use the engine and gearbox and one other part from a single donor car then you get age related. I used engine and gearbox from a Fiesta and a bit of the steering column, and got a P plate. I think it's quite dependent upon which DVLA office you go to though...

You'll need to IVA it too.

Oh, and strip down whatever you've got at the moment and start taking photos of the build from bare chassis upwards. This will help prove it's an amateur build and as far as the beauracrats are concerned, you could've started building yesterday so the age of the kit is irrelevant.

for all anyone would know, the chassis could have been built last week. i think it would just be treated the same as any other build. that chassis number won't have been registered, and as a manufacturer chassis number, i doubt it will have been registered on anything else since. some dvla offices let you choose your own chassis number i think

worst case, weld a new plate over the chassis number and stamp in a new one

[Edited on 2/5/09 by blakep82]