RegArchive and Vregs was borne out of my passion for number plates. I was born in the seventies and I remember fondly playing the number plate game with my parents every summer as we used to travel around the south coast on holiday - the first one to spot a P, R or S suffix on the first of August would win the special prize (usually some sweets or the choice of where to go the following day).
I also remember a fascination with Bond's Lotus Esprit in For Your Eyes Only and its number plate. I don't know why to this day. One of those childhood things I suppose.
I started to set this site up in November 2002 using my newly acquired web programming skills (PHP, HTML and CSS). My original aim was to collect photos from people who wanted to show their cars on the web associated with their number plates. I have luckily had a few hundred kind people send their photos to me, which you can see peppered around the site.
Unfortunately in 2010 I was involved in a legal spat about my domain name. My original domain name was (allegedly) infringing on another company's trademark (I never really could work out how) and I received several solicitors letters telling me to turn the domain over to them. I showed the letter to a solicitor friend, he started mentioning figures of a few hundred to several thousand pounds, and I figured I couldn't afford to go to court. Sadly the big boys won this time. So I went about choosing a new domain name and luckily vregs.com ("vehicle registrations"!) was available - shorter and snappier than the old domain anyway!
Some work with htaccess 301 permanent redirects and VRegs was born!
regarchive.com has been split away from vregs.com as it will now provide a dedicated place for more classic/cherished cars to be displayed.
Nowadays I mainly get questions from interested people about number plates or the history of them. I don't know all of the answers, but I am more than happy to try and help. Get in touch if you've got any questions!
