The base vehicles on most new motorhomes are pre-registered

Not from an established manufacturer, Spriddler.

My first "new" motorhome ( a Roller Team) was more than 12 months old (from when the van was built on a new chassis in Italy) when I bought it, but it was registered new on the day I bought it.

My subsequent vans were built to my order but I chose to have them registered 1st March regardless as to when they left the factory - one was delivered to the dealer the previous December.

Not sure how a foreign MH manufactuer would go about registering a chassis in the UK before conversion either ?

Some UK based "converters" of panel vans may indulge in dubious practices like pre-registering their base vehicles, but this would have negative side effects for the purcahser, as the van would be registed as "commercial" not "motohome" and have lower speed limits applied as result. DVLA are not very easily convinced to reclassify a vehicle originally registered as a commercial vehicle to a leisure vehicle + the warranty on the base vehicle would be expiring from the date it was registered + the "new" owner would go down on the V5C as the second owner. All the above would devalue the van & make it more difficult to sell, so why would they do it ?

The only valid reason I could see for pre-registering the base vehicle would be if they were a run-out model for a soon-to-be superceeded emissions class, where unsold stock had to be registered before a certain cut-off date to be allowed to be sold i.e. when Euro 4 was superceeded by Euro 5.

Nigel B.