Motorcycles turning historic: the bikes built in 1986.

Start with the date, because it is the whole story. The tax exemption for old vehicles is not a fixed list of classics. It is an age test that moves on every 1 April, and on 1 April 2027 it takes in the bikes built in 1986. Below is what the Department for Transport's make-and-model file says is left of them, and the one thing about motorcycle numbers that the file's own notes warn you about.

When a bike crosses the line

The law that moves the line is paragraph 1A of Schedule 2 to the Vehicle Excise and Registration Act 1994. A vehicle is exempt "during the period of 12 months beginning with 1 April in any year if it was constructed more than 40 years before 1 January in that year". Count forty years back from 1 January 2027 and you arrive at the start of 1987: anything built before then, which now includes 1986, is in from 1 April 2027. Some special vehicles put to commercial use, and vehicles charged certain other annual rates, are carved out by the same paragraph.

GOV.UK's guidance gives the version in force now: "If your vehicle was built before 1 January 1986, you can stop paying vehicle tax from 1 April 2026."

Winter swells the SORN column

The file counts every bike on the last day of the year, and for motorcycles that is a day in winter. The DfT's notes and definitions say so directly: "Motorcycles are especially affected as a large number are kept off road during the winter months (given a SORN). Many such vehicles have 6 month licences covering, for example April to September and are not used for the rest of the year." So the off-the-road column for 1986 bikes at the end of 2025 mixes bikes laid up for the winter with bikes off the road for longer. The file does not tell them apart, and the notes give no split, so neither do we.

The makes

Make	Off the road (SORN)	Licensed	All
Honda	4,718	703	5,421
Yamaha	2,925	449	3,374
Kawasaki	2,280	193	2,473
Suzuki	2,221	243	2,464
BMW	884	175	1,059
Vespa (Douglas)	521	160	681
Harley-Davidson	204	52	256
MZ	201	37	238
Moto Guzzi	128	23	151
Lambretta	68	40	108

The 10 makes with the most 1986 bikes still on the register, largest first. Makes are as the file names them. The register's "Other" entries are buckets for makers it does not list separately, not makes in their own right, so they are left out of this ranking; their 489 bikes are still in every total.

The models the register can name

Here the data runs thin, and it is better to say so than to fill the gap. Of the 17,205 bikes built in 1986, 10,300 carry no usable model name: they sit in the file as "model missing" under their maker, or under one of the "Other" buckets. The DfT's notes explain that make and model are encoded at first registration from codes the manufacturers supply, and that "some smaller vehicle manufacturers are not part of the encoding scheme". What can be named is below. Treat it as the named part of the list, not the list.

Model	Off the road (SORN)	Licensed	All
Kawasaki ZX	949	62	1,011
BMW K Series	499	76	575
BMW R Series	320	82	402
Honda VFR750F	244	24	268
Honda CB	244	21	265
Honda CBX	228	6	234
Honda C90	181	52	233
Honda C90E	177	53	230
Kawasaki Z	187	23	210
Honda C90M	122	32	154

It does not happen on its own

GOV.UK: "You must apply for a vehicle tax exemption to stop paying vehicle tax. This is sometimes called putting a vehicle into the 'historic tax class'." And, on the guide's page for vehicles exempt from vehicle tax: "You must tax your vehicle even if you do not have to pay." The MOT runs on its own wording on the same page: no MOT is needed if "the vehicle was built or first registered more than 40 years ago" and "no 'substantial changes' have been made to the vehicle", but "you must still keep it in a roadworthy condition".

Reading the numbers honestly

Counts use DVLA's year-of-manufacture field. The DfT's data files page defines it only as "Year of manufacture, usually very similar to YearFirstUsed but not always available", while the Act asks when a bike was "constructed", and nothing on either page says the two are identical. Motorcycles whose year of manufacture is not available in the file (131,775 of them, across every year) cannot be placed in 1986 and are not in any figure above. GOV.UK also lets a vehicle with an unknown build date qualify by its registration date, and a bike that goes that way is invisible to a count by year of manufacture. The whole United Kingdom is included, taxed and SORN together, summed across every year of first use.

Source: Department for Transport and Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, vehicle licensing statistics data files, df_VEH0124 ("Vehicles at the end of the year by licence status, body type, make, generic model, model, year of first use and year of manufacture: United Kingdom"), files df_VEH0124_AM and df_VEH0124_NZ dated 27 April 2026, end-of-2025 column, BodyType "Motorcycles". Rule text from GOV.UK and legislation.gov.uk, checked 26 September 2026. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

If the words on the list are unfamiliar, the main types of motorcycle sorts them out, and classic and vintage motorcycle art is where bikes of that age end up on a wall. The rest of the bike stage explains the words on the register.

Written by Craig Fearn, Throttlefolio. Last updated 28 September 2026.