Engine theft loophole

Motorcycles fitted with stolen engines can be given registration documents making them appear legitimate, DVLA has admitted. 

The agency said it would issue replacement registrations documents showing new engine numbers on request, without checking if the number related to a stolen bike.

It means a bike with a stolen engine could be offered for sale with a registration document making it appear legitimate. The buyer would have no way of telling unless stopped by police, at which point the bike could be seized.

A DVLA spokesman said: “If somebody notified us of a replacement engine number, we’d put it on our records but there are no automatic checks of police national computer and we don’t hold separate data sets of stolen engine or chassis numbers, so it would go onto the record.”

He added: “It wouldn’t be flagged as stolen because we simply wouldn’t know it was stolen.”

Read more on this – including how riders have no way to check whether an engine number relates to a stolen bike – in MCN, on sale now.