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Registration Plates in various Countries

paddypool

Ready to race!
Location
Ireland
Just curious to know how vehicle reg plates are, for want of a better word, 'made-up' in 'your' country...
eg. I have no idea how the UK number plate system works ?

In Ireland it's very simple, if it's the year 2014 & your from, e.g. county Wexford, the number plate is '14-WX-.....'

Just last year the 'gimmick' of splitting the year in 2, for car sales, was brought in...So cars bought between Jan & June are '141'
& cars bought from July to Dec are '142'

How do the numbers on UK cars work by not using the actual calendar year in the reg number?

& I'm guessing there are countries where you buy your registration plate & have it on every vehicle you own ??
 

pjr

Ready to race!
Location
Scotland
The UK numbers currently work like this, with number plates having two letters, two numbers, three letters

XX99ZZZ

The 'XX' part identifies which part of the country the car was registered, so some of my recent cars (before I got my private plate) were 'SP', which identified them as being registered in Dundee which was where the nearest registration office was. I'm not sure how this works now, as the DVLA have centralised all the registration functions instead of having regional offices.

The '99' part identifies the age of the car - 64 is the current value, for cars registered between September 1st 2014 & February 28th 2015. My car would have been a '14' as it was registered in April 2014.

The 'ZZZ' bit is a random 3 letter code, and doesn't mean anything.

Of course, in the UK, you can buy a 'private'/'cherished' plate, and the one I have is actually in the older format of X99ZZZ, where X was a letter showing the year of registration, the 99 bit could be a number anywhere between 1 and 999, and the ZZZ would be three random letters. This can be transferred from car to car with one of the provisos being that you can't make the car look newer than it is. In my case the year of registration letter at the front bears no relation to when my car was actually registered!!
 
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paddypool

Ready to race!
Location
Ireland
The UK numbers currently work like this, with number plates having two letters, two numbers, three letters

XX99ZZZ

The 'XX' part identifies which part of the country the car was registered, so some of my recent cars (before I got my private plate) were 'SP', which identified them as being registered in Dundee which was where the nearest registration office was. I'm not sure how this works now, as the DVLA have centralised all the registration functions instead of having regional offices.

The '99' part identifies the age of the car - 64 is the current value, for cars registered between September 1st 2014 & February 28th 2015. My car would have been a '14' as it was registered in April 2014.

The 'ZZZ' bit is a random 3 letter code, and doesn't mean anything.

Of course, in the UK, you can buy a 'private'/'cherished' plate, and the one I have is actually in the older format of X99ZZZ, where X was a letter showing the year of registration, the 99 bit could be a number anywhere between 1 and 999, and the ZZZ would be three random letters. This can be transferred from car to car with one of the provisos being that you can't make the car look newer than it is. In my case the year of registration letter at the front bears no relation to when my car was actually registered!!

thanks for reply....
seems abit cryptic/over complicated having the '64' denoting the year when it has no relation to the actual year '2014 & 'SP' not even appearing 'letterwise' in the word Dundee !...but the system works I guess!
 

James75

Go Kart Champion
Location
Exeter
Once the reg system had from the 1960's gone through all the letters, first at the end of the reg then from 1983 from the beginning (a plate) there needed to be a new system. The current one came in after the y reg.

As above, if you want VW in your reg that will be the Worcester area (I think)


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paddypool

Ready to race!
Location
Ireland
Once the reg system had from the 1960's gone through all the letters, first at the end of the reg then from 1983 from the beginning (a plate) there needed to be a new system. The current one came in after the y reg.

As above, if you want VW in your reg that will be the Worcester area (I think)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

nice !
 

martind511

New member
Location
Swindon
Once the reg system had from the 1960's gone through all the letters, first at the end of the reg then from 1983 from the beginning (a plate) there needed to be a new system. The current one came in after the y reg.

As above, if you want VW in your reg that will be the Worcester area (I think)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Indeed, post September 2001, the first letter of the registration indicated the geographic area of the UK and the second letter usually indicated which sub office it related to so where I live the local plate will be W for West of England, the second letter X for example would mean its from the Bristol licensing office - as per previous comments it doesn't really mean much nowadays as everything is centralised.

for more information look at the list of local memory tags on this page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicl...,_Crown_dependencies_and_overseas_territories
 

momonga

Passed Driver's Ed
Location
uk
If anyone interested,
In Japan
Location (divided in much more smaller area than UK - it makes cars posher instantly depending on the area especially in Tokyo)
Type ie. privately owned which classified by size and bus/truck/lorry etc)
Sub-type (hire cars, business use and etc)
and the Number
 
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