To the thread question itself.
I am having discussions at this moment about registers and important files/tooling related to several types of car. Now without making any kind of specific case out of an situation clearly Peels are the obvious micro example of what can happen if the original cars are unprotected and the information relating to them can be traded to find the 'missing' cars. I have owned an original Trident that was cloned on the assumption it no longer existed as everyone was pretty certain where it actually was, scrapped. Wrong car! Fortunately my buyer was convinced having seen several other alleged 'real' cars, one at auction - the fav place to wash the dodgy. He was convinced that mine was the real one and the others were not! He bought my car, since put next to post production examples it is actually easy to tell a wrong one in nearly all cases. The tricky ones are when a real car has been split two or three ways. I offered to get the car listed and attempt to straighten things out but he preferred not, since his entire car collection is a secret.
So there you have one car that trips up on much of what are, are not and could be the problems of registers.
Firstly the information can be used to manipulate the records of certain cars or to create new or extra ones.
Secondly the information can be used to disbar genuine cars, maliciously
Thirdly the records can be used to obtain rare cars from source. Even a list of likely addresses to which a theft can be attempted.
Fourthly, and perversly, a well run register immediately combats the above, as it has the relevant information to identify real cars and track them. That includes stolen cars when they turn up later, for what good that might do. Even that Peel will reappear at some stage, when it changes owner.
Put another way, a secret is only a secret of no one knows about it. For as long as I have had cars I have had some of them remotely stored. I refuse to leave that chance of the info, as to what be where, to a third party. It has worked as I have only had one car stolen when under my control as opposed to quite a few in the relatively short time of the process of removing vehicles bought from various clearance sites not totally under my control. Once I have things more under my control, with cars stored at home therefore, I will be far less concerned about sharing information.
Fifthly, there will always be reasons why people will not want to have their cars listed. Despite the frustration this has to be respected as like my secret buyer he has very good reasons why that have little to do with cars specifically.
Sadly this suggests only edited highlights of a register can thus be placed in the public domain.
It suggests that the team running the register need to be the right sort of people, honest and trustworthy. Problem is how can you ensure that to be the case over the longer count of years. Once the information is given it cannot be taken back. Certainly it does tend to rely on a benevolent Godparent to oversee and sometimes to finance the operation. What happens when the Godparent can no longer be interested?
One way, in Britain, is for the information and valuable assets to be made into a Trust. That is a self managing and financing entity who picks its own management as trustees. If it obtains gifts it can benefit from gift aid and manage its assets to cover its costs. The closed management allows it the ability of some continuity of the people running it to keep the trust assets safe, used, and fairly administered. The Trojan Trust is such an entity.
This is not an answer but just observation with my bias on registering my vehicles.
