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You know your car is a new model when you roll down to have it registered and the RTA says "we don't have identifiers for the make and model so we can't give you a licence plate".
That was the experience of Towncars hire car owner/driver Geoff Rickwood, who last Friday tried to get licence plates for the first factory gas Holden Caprice to be registered.
While Towncars has been excited about adding the new vehicle to its fleet, somebody should have mentioned its arrival on the Australian scene to the RTA.
The RTA was unable to compute the LPG Holden Caprice’s individual Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) – which gives every vehicle a unique identifier for chassis and engine block, based on a series of numbers that begins with the brand (in this case Holden), the make (Caprice) and the model (Dedicated LPG) before adding the unique numeric identifier of each new vehicle as it rolls of the assembly line.
“I bought the Caprice from Sutton City at Rosebery and they were going to get it registered and put the HC plate on for me,” Rickwood says. “I was a little shocked when I went to pick up the car, only to be told 'We couldn't get it registered. The RTA doesn't have a VIN number for the new model'...I felt like I was all dressed up with no-where to go.
“It’s kind of nice to know that you're the very first to register the first factory gas Australian-made Holden… a tiny bit of history," he says.
Mr Rickwood says he will use the Caprice in his new role as the Epping franchisee of Towncars.com hire service, which bills itself as ‘the Bunnings of the Hire Car market or the working man's limousine’, according to executive chairman Ross Cameron.
“Our clients are mainly corporates on a budget who want a superior, safe, comfortable vehicle for their staff but they don't like paying exorbitant fares to recover the costs of an Audi A8 or a long wheel-based Mercedes Benz. So something like the LPG Caprice is perfect – now that it’s passed the registration hurdle."
"Up until now, the Towncars fleet vehicle of choice has been the Ford G6E -- previously the only Australian-made sedan with a factory gas engine. It’s a gorgeous vehicle and we love it but up until now, we had no other choice.
“Factory gas is critical to Towncars because it gives a triple benefit - we don't lose boot space with a conversion tank, we get great fuel economy and we generate the lowest emissions per passenger kilometre on the road.
“An engine that is tuned to run on one fuel will always outperform an engine that has to adopt compromise settings to switch between petrol and LPG - which is most of the Australian taxi fleet,” Mr Cameron says.
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