eccles

Vancouver's posting of the UK press release re the Premacy, has prompted to to wonder about the registration letters used in the UK.

For those that don't know, the UK uses a prefix letter to indicate the year of first registration, hence the press release's reference to X and Y registered cars. Where we in the States might refer to a '95 Miata, in the UK it might be referred to as an S-Reg.

At least, that's my understanding of it, based upon having been in the UK back in the late 60's when this practice was first introduced. But I wonder if someone from Old Blighty can answer a couple of questions for me:

• I thought the system used one letter per year. However, if my memory is correct and this all started pre-1970, then you should have run out of letters by now. Instead, it appears that you're still approaching the end of the alphabet, so is it not one letter per year?
  
• When you do eventually reach Z, what then? Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, perhaps?

shahpor

The numbering system has changed in the last few years. However, under the old system when we reached Y reg (didn't use Z as it looked too much like 2) the system would start over again with A,B,C etc.

Now under the new system the scheme has changed from Xnnn XXX (X = letters, n = numbers) to XXnn XXX.

The first two letters represent the location the car was first registered, for example LN for London.

The next two number represent the year, but it is more complicated then that so I will explain in a moment.

The last three letters are random.

Now, with the numbering system, the problem we have here is that the registration marks change twice a year here, not once a year as it used to be like. So now the numbers have to tell the difference between a car registered in March of one year and in September of the same year.

The way they get round this problem is by splitting the numbers into two sections. This means that the cars registered in March start with the 0 prefix and the one registered in September with the 5 prefix.

So, for example, cars registered in March of this year will have the prefix 03, and cars registered in September will have the 53 prefix.

Next year, the cars in March will be 04 and September will be 54. And so on.

This post has turned out longer than I planned

Still, I hope this answers your question.

Shahpor

MarkW

Thorough and correct explaination from Shahpor above.

The new system makes it more restrictive for people who want personalised plates, as the 3rd/4th digit numbers are fixed (currently '03').

If you were buying a new car today, you can pay from £250 upwards to get a private plate which would be (XX03 XXX), where X can be any letter.

However, any unregistered old plates (in the format Xnnn XXX) are still available for sale, which is why I purchased M2 RXB recently.

Simple eh?

rael

I think that was probably the clearers explananation of our new number plate system I have read. Nice one.

rael

shahpor

Thanks guys :D

One thing I find interesting is that you can get round the problem of not making a car appear newer than it is by turning the number plate around.

This is a particular example that I discovered.

I found this BMW M5, which was a 1995 car. This would have made it a M reg car. The car had a private plate which read BMW 5S. Now this car could not have had S5 BMW because this would have made it appear newer then it really is, but there is obviously no problem with it appearing the other way round.

Do you think the average motorist cares which way round a plate reads? I don't think so, so people could mistake it for a '98 car, which would be S reg.

I am surpised the government lets this happen.

Still, I don't really mind either way.

Shahpor

rael

Should have stopped whilst you were ahead. That has lost me!

rael

shahpor

Sorry Rael. Let me explain.

You know that it is illegal to make a car appear newer than it actually is?

For example, you couldn't have Y1 ABC on a ten year old car.

Well what I was saying is that this car I found got round this problem by having the plate backwards. So it works out as follows:

S5 BMW - Illegal

BMW 5S - Legal.

Now the car was a '95 car, so it couldn't carry an S plate, but by reversing it it is legal.

This is what I find strange.

Hope this has cleared it up.

Shahpor

Lensman

So what you're saying is that £000001 pounds is not as good as £100000 pounds? Uhrmmm.....

shahpor

???

Not quite sure what you mean Lensman.

Shahpor

Lensman

Well, the reversed plate is legal but only because it is a totally different identifier. You can't really compare the two even though they have the same alphanumerics. The ordering is critical just as it is with my money numbers.

shahpor

Yeah but my point is that the average person on the street might not realise that.

If it wasn't for the order then it certainly looks like a normal plate.

It is the same reason why they don't have a Z plate, people might mistake it for a 2.

Seems strange to me that they would ban one and not the other.

Don't get me wrong though, I am glad it is not banned as that is a cool plate. :D

Shahpor

DoomWolf

I think there has been some confusion in the explanations, so I'm going to try my own.

When the letter registration system came in (in the 1960s) they used a suffix system. For example an original A-reg car would have been along the lines of ABC 123A where the first 3 letters are random, the numbers are random and the final letter is the indication of when it is registered.

Some letters of the alphabet were never used as regular suffixes. These were I, O, Q, U and Z (although O and U could be used elsewhere in the registration).

When they reached Y-reg (ie, ABC 123Y) cars in 1982, they changed the suffix system to a prefix system. This meant that the same registrations could be re-used, but the other way around. Therefore, a 1983 car could have been A123 ABC.

The BMW 5S registration would have been issued in 1979 (I think) and can legally be put on any car from that year onwards. That means that there is also a corresponding S5 BMW registration issued towards the end of the 1990s (I'm not sure what year because they decided to issue two registrations a year in order to run to the end of the system faster so it could be replaced). There will indeed be a car somewhere with the S5 BMW registration. Once a registration has been issued it can be used on any car as long as the car does not predate the year that the registration was issued.

I can't see how anyone could be confused as to the age of the car by the registration being BMW 5S. The system has been around long enough for everyone to know the difference between a suffix and a prefix.

And on the new registration system, it is only the first letter that identifies where the car was registered (L for London, B for Birmingham, O for Oxford, V for Severn Valley etc). The second letter is entirely random. It's worth pointing out that the letter Z can now also appear in the new system. And in case anyone is wondering (if your still reading at this point, which I doubt ) the year identifiers for cars registered in 2010 will be 10 and 60 and in 2011 will be 11 and 61 etc. This should take the present system up until 2050 before it needs changing again.

I hope that's cleared things up. :D

eccles

Gee, I'm almost sorry I asked!

Yes, I remember them being suffixes back then, but I think you'll find that the first two letters indicated the registration office. I remember that as a kid growing up in the UK in the 60's, one of the games we used to play on long trips was to identify where cars came from by their plates. The AA handbook used to list the prefixes, as I recall.As an outsider, I must admit to being bemused by the fact that you can't put a new plate on an old car. Do people really judge the age of a vehicle based purely on an arbitrary letter on its licence plate?!?

shahpor

This topic seems to have ballooned out of control :D

I didn't know that they changed the order when the started back at the beginning, Thanks DoomWolf

That is quite interesting that BMW 5S is somewhere near 1979!

However, I do not agree that the new system has one random letter in the first two. The reason I say this is that when my mate picked up his new Civic Type R from the dealer all the new registered car were LN.

Also, my dealer said that he didn't know what the registration mark for my RX-8 would be, but he did know that it would start LN. And he even put that on my order form.

Also, to answer your question eccles, yes we do judge our cars from one letter! Or as it is now, two numbers!

MarkW

At the risk of boring everone to death, the current UK license plate definitions can be found here...

http://www.dvla.gov.uk/vehicles/regm...ent_system.htm

eccles

So if the registration has expired and it has no plates, nobody knows how old it is?

DoomWolf

I didn't want to confuse things by going into that. I think it was the last two of the three letters that indicated registration office. The ones I know are UE for Wolverhampton, JO for reading and VS for Hertfordshire.

Yes, it's a much easier system (IMO) than elsewhere. At least 99% of cars here (the ones that haven't had private plates) can have their age judged by a glance at the registration plate.

shahpor

:D

That is something that I have never understood. The whole concept of expiring registrations is alien to me.

When I went to pick up a car from Germany it was the same way, you keep the registration when you sell the car and the government issues a new one to the new owner.

Seems like a lot of hard work, but I can see some advantages.

Still, I think i prefer the permanent method we employ here.

Shahpor

DoomWolf

Ok, so it's not entirely random, but no registration area (in England & Wales at least) has more than three registration offices. All your mate's dealer's cars were simply registered in a batch at the Stanmore office. Where I live all new cars are B (Birmingham) and the second letter is random because there is only one registration office.

MarkW

The second letter is not entirely random. The first two digits do identify the place of issue, see below:

http://www.dvla.gov.uk/vehicles/regm...tifier-map.htm

How come such a dull subject gets so many posts :D

DoomWolf

Registrations don't expire. A car is registered when new and keeps the registration (although it can be cahnged as long as it is not given a registration newer than the car) until the car is destroyed.

If you remove all identifying marks off any car, anywhere, how would you know how old it is?

shahpor

Doesn't this mean that all the cars in a certain radius from a given registration office have the same first two letters?

DoomWolf

Not necessarily. Look at http://www.dvla.gov.uk/vehicles/regm...memorytags.htm

Stanmore in London could have L followed by any of K, L, M, N, O, P, R, S or T.

shahpor

ohh, now I see.

Thanks for clearing that up.

Seems like this new system is more confusing than I first thought :D

Shahpor

shahpor

Hey, this is the most activity I have seen on this part of the forum for some time. :D