I would presume that as long as the car is on the road or SORN. If it's been sold to a scrappy then they'll send off the relevant part of the V5 and I would have thought at that point Swansea will delete the records.

While using the Goverment MOT checking site. I entered the registration number of a car I owned in the late 90s to see if it was still on the road. The make, model, colour and date first registered came up but no MOT information. Concluded vehicle had been scrapped. This seems to work with cars going back to the early 1970s. Example LXG690L, a Datsun 1200 Estate that my father had from new. So how long are vehicle records kept for and why?

Checking on my past vehicles, it seems that there's no deletion timetable - all my vehicles which were in use when the DVLA took over registrations from County Councils are there but older ones aren't.

Looking at my old 2001 Octavia MOT records they are available online from the Feb 2006 MOT so I presume it was computerised from a bit before then - probably April 2005.

I've been looking up most of my cars that I can remember back in time and most from mid 80's seem to be still online anything earlier is not. My Dad's 2001 Octavia that was written off circa 2010 is not available.