Preserving an historic registration number?

[pasini s]

Dear friends,

now that my 409 is running a bit better, I must register it in Italy to avoid any hassle with insurance and other bureaucratic matters. I feel very sad to change its beautiful chrome-over-black metal number plates to install new garish Euro-spec plates, but I have no choice.

I would hate to see its original registration number parted from it forever, though; and I have been told that, paying a sort of annual fee, I could keep the 'property' (so to speak) of PPC258E so it would not be reallocated to another classic car. DVLA is not very clear about it, it seems that I have to re-register the car but it would need to be inspected by the DVLA local agency (and the car, obviously, is in Italy now.)

Does anybody know any better about the possibility to keep my 409's original reg number PPC258E 'tied' to the car so they could be reunited if I sell the car back in the UK? Probably you might know some professional who would do this for me in UK; we have several private 'agencies' of this kind in Italy, but obviously they know nothing about DVLA.

Thank you

Stefano