When I was a youngster back in 1972 it was possible to reserve a number prior to it being issued. I was living in London then and the London codes at that time were JD. I was able to reserve PJD (my initials) followed 2L, L being the year, 1972. Unfortunately someone had already blagged the number 1. I was very proud of that plate which I had on a BSA motorcycle. This was in the days before personalised number plates became a huge financial business.
@@des_smith7658 Yes Mate, London Transport reserved the SLT for the four prototypes, ,SLT 56 to SLT 59 for the first four, then VLT, WLT, CLT(reversed along with DYE, ie 776 DYE, RM 1776) then ALD and ALM with a B suffix, then CUV with a C, then NML on an E, and finally SMK 760F,( RML 2760), but never beat the 7000 odd RT Family Buses built during, and after the War, exotic letters like EYK FJJ, FXT, HLX, KYY, LLU,NXP, and OLD for the very last RT. (may have left some out,) Many Municipal Vehicles also reserved blocks of Registrations, I remember many London Borough of Haringey Dustcarts registered HUL***K.
You forgot one British plate oddity. You use the same car plate in the back of your trailer. Most of the other world have different plates and registration for trailers.
You can also transfer a plate onto another car you own, or can gift it, so long as it does not make the car appear newer than it is. For example my dad bought a car in the early 1960s with an old Surrey plate of 4 numbers + 2 letters. This got transferred onto every car he subsequently owned and not long after his passing when my mum stopped driving she gifted it to me and its now on a 2014 car
I'd wondered what the British system was, only to find out there were multiple systems. I'd heard presenters talking about "K" plates or "M" plates, but had no idea what they were talking about. I'm more informed now, but still just as confused. Thanks for trying.
Thanks for explaining, i have noticed at lot UK YT with car content identified cars by number plates. Australia with 6 states n 2 territories all have different colour plates n letters/numbers order. Some states/territories have slogans at bottom of the number plate. Some states/territories have special plates government plates for government vehicles, personal plates, euro style plates, interstate plates for trucks or known as federal plates.
Utterly fascinating, informative, beautifully scripted and beautifully edited video. Amazing work! Some really interesting tidbits in there I had no idea about!
thanks Ed. I've saved this one to watch a few times over. being a child of the 60s and 70s the letter prefix and suffix systems were instinctive. when they changed to the modern system with 2 registrations per year the vehicle age now takes some pondering. maybe after a few more watches it might become easier.
funnily enough, i remember the number plate assigned to my father's 1950's morris minor traveller from when i was a child in london the early 1960's. it was sold when we emigrated the canada. but good old JRX 939 lived on in an old family photo of me washing it at the age of around 4 or 5!
@@LostsTVandRadio not at all. They had quite a few quirks. Certain types, RT, RM were separated chassis and body on overhaul. Put back together using a different body or chassis and often received the registration from another vehicle. And all completely legal! Apparently!
Loved spotting registrations as a kid. Especially during the school holidays when the new plate would come out. I always tried to see how quickly I could see one. My personal record is 3 day before registration day: July 28th (P reg, 1996). One of my first cars was a 1979 3.0S Capri running black plates. Originally issued with the white/yellow combination.
What's odd is all numbers belong to the Secretary of State and can be withdrawn for any reason, though normally it only happens if it's inappropriate and issued in error or became inappropriate over time. A famous example being BO11 LUX that the DVLA sold, then forced the driver to remove it.
Great video. The old system of area identifying letters was generally codes rather than abbreviations, many areas and Cities were very proud of their codes, JN for Southend on Sea, DL for the Isle of Wight, and many others, it was all there for us kids, listed in Dad's AA Members' Handbook, hours of fun out on the road spotting vehicles from different places.
Technically Q was used to indicate a vehicle where the age could not be determined, common at one time on ex military vehicles, former breakdown trucks etc.
I've seen military now have a different system yet again. I think it's Number-Number Letter-Letter Number-Number. Often with 3 lines of text, and the old black background plates.
Q was also used for temporary registrations often on Vehicles belonging to foreign Embassies only here for a year or less or new vehicles that will be exported by driving them to destination country and registered there. Trade plates only recognised in Great Britain.
Fascinating video. Thank you. I’ve had lots of different company cars over the years and couldn’t tell you what any of the registrations were but I can always remember the registration number of my dad’s Ford Prefect which he had from the 50s to 1968. It was 3 letters 3 numbers. I enquired about buying the number as personalised plate. Unfortunately I found out the number is scrapped when the car is scrapped. But yeah. Great video!
Back in the depths of time the Post Office was the only one allowed to use GPO - PO being a West Sussex registration. Then in the gradual take over by Swansea a lot of the localised registration letters were just dropped and all sorts of plates appeared, noticeably in West Sussex we were inundated with YJ a Dundee plate!!!! When are you going to try the Army registration system😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
In Germany we have regional coding with one, two or three letters in one block then another zwo letters and up to four numbers. You can always tell the place where the car is registered - and if you move you get a new plate. Big citys have one or two letters, rural areas three - so it is always entertaining that we city dwellers invent funny meanings for our friends's plates from the countryside (when they feel uneasy driving in the big big city ;-)
Ed, you should do a follow-up on how both private/cherished plates and the Northern Ireland plate system/history works - especially as NI plates are a popular private plate option for UK mainland cars! Here in the US it is relatively easy and inexpensive in most states to obtain a personalized/cherished plate. For example, my first car in NI was a 1973 Wolseley 1300 with the County Antrim reg of GIA478. Unfortunately we let this slip away at the time when the Wolseley was sold for scrap in the late 80s and this plate lived on attached to an Alfa Romeo for some time, before finally lapsing completely. According to the DVLA (I enquired!), there are no plans to offer lapsed plates again to the market. So, I did the next best thing - I went to my local motor vehicle registration authority in Florida and verified that GIA 478 was an available combination and paid a mere $100 to have that as my vehicle registration here!
That Rover 75 plate would be a pain to make (we make plates at work). Jaguars have their own size rears, but at least they're rectangular, not curved. I'm not sure how the printer would pull it through, and cutting one to shape afterwards would be hard. Don't think Jepsons even make those acrylics.
The S-Type (I think uniquely), matches the Rover 75 aperture. Both models were released together, so it was probably thought to be a growing trend. AFAIK, they are the only 2 models with that plate shape. I have had both!
Wikipedia has excessive detail if anyone wants to go for a deep dive! Far harder to follow than Twin Cam's description, but for some intrigued it will fill an hour or so! Great intro to this weirdly interesting topic!
You mention offensive combinations, and of course the likes of BUM and SEX have always been banned, but also GOD. When the three letter codes came out in 1932 the UW area (London, I think) brought out DUW codes, completely oblivious to the fact that Duw is the Welsh word for God. Nowadays, to be on the safe side, plates have to be inoffensive in English, Welsh and Gaelic.
My current car ends in CVM. A standard combination, but I went to a busy drive thru a few weeks back, and when it’s busy, they write the last three letters so they know which car it’s going to. I got home, and the first thing everyone in my house wanted to know was who thought it was a funny idea to write CUM on the receipt.
The letter after the S on Scottish plates starts from the south at SA and works its way north to SY. Glasgow (SA to SJ), Edinburgh (SK to SO), Dundee (SP to ST), Aberdeen (SU to SW) and Inverness (SX and SY). I'm from Aberdeen and it's rare to see a plate starting SU because all the SU51es and SU54ns buy them all. Fun fact: SN07 was never used because of snot, so Edinburgh got TN07 in 2007.
One of the quirks is that after 1990 or before 2001 6 character plates were no longer assigned to new cars. If you do find one and it is not a personal plate then it signifies that the car was registered new with a personal plate and thus never gained a unique age-related one of it's own. When the personal plate is transferred off the car a 6 digit one is assigned with the correct age marker so it's easy to tell that the plate is not original at time of first registration. Since 2001 though cars registered with a personal plate initially have a standard number assigned to them but only in the background at the DVLA and won't appear on records until the personal plate is transferred.
That's interesting, although I'm not sure that's true. I bought a new car in Winchester, and put my personal plate on it. When I sold it, it was assigned an Isle of Wight plate (HW), despite never having gone to the Island.
@@cjmillsnun that would be a car registered after 2001 then, the 6 digit thing was dropped on the switch to the current style plates. It only applied for the last decade of Prefix plates.
@@cjmillsnun Since the local offices all closed, re - registrations are no longer geographical; you get allocated one of whichever block DVLA are issuing at the time (from year-end gaps or whole unused series)
That is a crackin piece of info Neil! The only car in the family that had 6 digits was my granda's used 99 Mondeo. He bought it in around 2002 and was the second owner so he would've been the first person to run around with the T plate on it. Weirdly he replaced the plate with his own private plate in 2005 which was also a 6 digit T plate.
Ed, when did you get a Red BMW, it's parked just to the right of the extension ladder. ED, I have a old plate hanging up in our garage "in CA USA." The plate is silver on black, its made of aluminum and has QB 9009 on it. What would the history of that plate be? I picked it up at an auto swap meet YEARS ago. Another great watch.
It was always cool to be able to choose your number plate from a selection in a book assigned to the dealership when purchasing a brand new car. It’s a shame you still can’t do this!
The closest I got was when I bought a new Chevy Aveo in 2008. The dealer had 4 or 5 identical pre-reg'd cars with 20-30 miles on the clock so I got to choose my plate. I went with DKO so I could call the car Dicko.
Interesting video Ed and well explained. Not easy our seemingly bonkers systems that have changed several times. In terms of the older plates and town/city identifiers, local to me in West Yorkshire was HD for Dewsbury, CX as well as VH for Huddersfield and JX for Halifax, none of which you’d call exactly obvious! There again on the latest system G signifies Kent; apparently we all know Kent is referred to as the Garden of England… Personal plates are quite a thing now of course. I quite like the old prefix letter for the date plates for looking a bit less fussy, so have one on my current car. The plate would actually make it 1984, but in reality it’s a 2021 model.
Complicated as it may be, still a much better system than here in Sweden where the number plates literally mean nothing. Up until 1972 however we had initial letters on the plates signifying the county in which the car was registered.
Until the changeover in 2001 we were familiar with those time-honoured geographical codes. GL, AF and CV for Cornwall, WP and NP for Worcestershire, FH, AD and DG for Gloucestershire etc. Unfortunately those codes stay hard wired in our memories so now we tend to misinterpret the 'new' plates.
IIRC, the issue frequency changed towareds the end of the prefix letter year issues, as they wanted to get to the new system before the old system ran out (i..e. got to Y reg on an anual-issue basis), so X & Y registrations were issued in 6-month intevrals, consequently, there aren't many X or Y plate cars about compared to, say, P, V or W.
I wish we had the different colour for front and rear in BC. Our plates are otherwise designed to be perfect for a culture of fast mountain driving (easily legible, distinctly reflective, distinct logo (based on the flag) used in place of a dash separator so the number can be read and unmistakably identified as "ours" all in one glance even at night in the fog on a twisty road) but nobody thought to make them directional. Maybe it's because we used to have big reflective pastel coloured stickers on the rear but now that's gone I can actually appreciate the UK idea.
Its also widely believed that any plates beginning SF are most likely to be undercover police cars in Scotland as most of them come through the same registry office
Has anyone noticed that the vast majority of cars reg'd since 2001 (so 99% of what you see on the road) have at least one U V W X Y or Z in the last 3 letters? Once I spotted it, I couldn't stop seeing it everywhere! The current system is handy though. You can sometimes know what sort of a life the car has had by the plate. Buying a relatively new car with a far away area code? Could be higher mileage as it may travel a lot. Buying an 20 year old Yaris in the north of Scotland with SY at the start? It's probably not had many owners, but could be rotten because of the crap weather.
Excellent video. I have several "cherished" plates on various vehicles. It always amuses me though, that the DVLA have a bit of a double standard. They will encourage you to buy a plate that says a certain word, thing, or sentence if you bunch the letters up. But then, when you buy it and display it spacing it the way you should to make it show the word you bought it for, they then fine you for doing so!!! A tad hypocritical, methinks. For example: SHE1K. Legally, it can only be written and displayed as SHE 1 K. Or COM1C, that Jimmy Tarbuck had, or MAG1C for Paul Daniels. COM 1 C and MAG 1 C was how they had to be displayed. Also, I love it when the pen pushers miss an obvious "rude" one that slips through the net. Preston licencing office allowed PN15 to be used and I've seen lots of "interesting " combinations. PN15 BYG. PN15 BOY PNI5 MAD etc, etc. When I saw the first one, I remember thinking "Oops, someone messed up there". Many thanks for a great video.
I'm old enough to remember the "new" reflective white & yellow plates being introduced and the new game on the bus was counting how many new plates you'd seen on a bus trip to the shops
@des_smith7658 ....,I'm not talking about bus plates I'm talking about going into town on a Saturday with our parents and counting how many cars or vans etc had the new style plates fitted
Coding information into identifiers has fallen out of fashion. UK plates are longer than they need to be for this reason. And making the year explicit creates those busy times for dealers. Most countries (well France and NZ at least) just use a national series. Next new car gets the next number in the series (some unused for various reasons). You can still tell the age. And location is pretty meangless because cars can relocate without changing the plates. France changed from location based plates about 2010. So why all that ongoing UK complication? Online databases mean that informatrion about a vehicle can be easily made accessible. I've wondered why not make them random within the national pattern? Then the system lasts for ever. I notice that many European countries seemiongly copy either UK or French pattern.
Because the immediacy of that information is useful for everyone. By looking at my BMW, I could tell when buying it that it had lived on the south coast for its whole life, and since the six month changeover came in, dealers don’t now see a rush like the used to.
Number plates are designed to be read at a glance. The vast majority of plates remain in the same location. If you witness a hit and run for example, it’s quite simple to be able to remember the plate as it will have a familiar feel to it.
@@TwinCam Not quite a big a rush. It used to be about 1/4 of all cars registered were on 1st Aug. It's slightly more even now but there is still a slight rush / peak at new registration dates. Of course they aren't 'new' for quite so long anymore.
The whole yellow white thing was basically because a group of MPs were trying to use a debate on it to filibuster until the end of session blocking a vote on giving women equal voting rights.
Showing my age the leading year single letter (2 decades) was preceded by a year letter trailing for 2 decades I do remember these later ones,L earliest. Before that I believe were a number group and letter group (20 available letters) starting from still current A1 worth over 100k. ie 1 letter one number that expanded to 3 letter and 3 number, I do vaguely remember reading these were flipped around ie reversed groupings.
I think the new Alfa Romeo Junior is the first Alfa not to have offset front plates for a long time, if ever. Did the manufacturer have dispensation to have this arrangement or is there no legislation surrounding the positioning of the plate ?
It just has to be within the front area of the car (the windscreen is not allowed but the scuttle is) and wholly visible from the front over a certain angle, kit cars and supercars are the usual ones to have offset plates.
Canadian here, I have a british plate question. As a dedicated listener to the Smith and Sniff podcast, I've heard them joking about "3D plates" and other options that people seem to think are tasteless. Can anyone explain this? I imagine the 3D thing is the raised text seen on some plates towards the end of the video but what's wrong with it?
The GB was changed to UK unilaterally without consulting the international body that controls vehicle country identification plates so if any country one is driving through wants to be awkward over a UK plate they can be as not internationally recognised. Countries such as the Isle of Man, Guernsey and Jersey are not part of the UK so still use GBM.GBG and GBJ. GBI still used by Northern Ireland as the correct name is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The EU had nothing to do with it and recognise the GB plate. The EU flag could have just been replaced on the blue stripe with the Union Flag retaining the GB.
To those of a certain age,black plates just don’t look right on ‘73 to ‘80 cars.I also despair when I see the narrower font used for a new set of plates on a classic.Rant over!
Enjoyed as usual but I am still a bit puxxled, but perhaps that's because I have an old brain - or because he rattled through the idiot board.! Lol But I wil watch it gain and take notes to aid my feeble cognition! Thanks for you efforts on our behalf. Rob
Though technically yes, in practice not quite. Liverpool, though assigned M for Merseyside, generally doesn’t use that code, instead opting for more local codes such as D for Deeside and P for Preston.
It's funny how main dealer info on a reg, seems to enhance the car value, yet a sticker along the bottom with something like..'Economy car sales ltd ' does the opposite.
@Grahamvfr At some point there’s a changeover between people viewing it as dirty advertising that could do with being removed, and it becoming a piece of history we want to show off 😂
They don't exist on this plane, they are 4D, they break the concepts of the physical, spiritual and atomic boundaries. They in short exist as an anomaly, something that we shouldn't try to explain.
The government have literally made a fortune from selling previously unissued and defunct private number plates. By utilising all previous systems to make different letter/number combinations, they hold regular auctions. Short and name plates, sell for enormous amounts of money. There is also a secondary market, where people sell their private plates through brokers. A vehicle has to be taxed and have a current mot, for a number to be transferred. However, numbers can also be temporarily held on a DVLA retention certificate.
I think it only has to be taxed and motd within the last 5 years. I've definitely transferred the plate on a vehicle that had been off the road and sorned for 3 years.
I saw a beautiful 1978 T reg Ford Escort mk2 RS2000 today, looked like a nut and bolt rebuild, to my horror it was on black and silver plates in the post 2001 font, kind of ruined the whole car for me!
They all still fall into one of the formats described, but might not indicate when the car was registered and are more likely to be transferred to another vehicle from their original one.
It's not quite possible for anyone to make plates. The makers need to be licensed and display their postcode and makers name discreetly on the front of the plate. Cloned plates often have none of these markings and are sourced via the internet as 'display plates'.The police look out for this.
YCJ118 would have been issued between April and September 1961 in Herefordshire. (The oldclassiccar website has a list of pre 73 registration codes/areas/dates including ‘dateless’ ones)
you say 10 think you mean 3, in 2021 and no i do not buy this "legal black plate til 1980" suffix L latest, no M N P R and certtainly NO prefix A-Y but that isnnt the only bug i have for pre2001, post2001 font on a pre2001 reg,
The vast majority of people who watch this video won’t be interested in some antiquated system. They’ll want to know how they work today. So it only makes sense to work backwards unless I want alienated viewers.
I think you might've overlooked the Isle Of Man, which has number plates written "backwards". So for example, instead of D68 LMC, it would be written LMC 68D, just like the suffix plates. Not sure about how they displayed pre-1983 registered cars, but I know that between 83 and 01, they produced them using this format.
Guernsey is just numbers, Jersey is J plus numbers. Alderney is AY plus numbers. Sark probably just paints something on the side of the horse or tractor (cars are banned).
Manx plates are in the same format as the pre-2001 GB plates, except that the suffixes/prefixes don't denote any particular year, and either the second and third letters are MN or the whole code is MAN. I appreciate I may have missed a detail somewhere.
@@MakerfieldConsort you could indeed be right. I made my observations from a VHS cassette called "The CompLete Driving Video" ("L" in "Complete" spelled with a red capital "L" to indicate that it was a learner driver video). One portion in particular which involved a police driver giving a running commentary, showed lots of cars on the island, and I always remember the cars that appeared to have the plates written in said format.
Initially registraion plates from 1903, one letter and one to four numbers, A1-9999. After that two letters AB1-9999, then three letters and one to three numbers, AAB1-999 then BAB1-999, CAB1-999. But depending which area had more new vehicles Y would be reached more quickly than in other areas and sometimes not all. After that it was one to three numbers before the three letters 1-999AAB for example. And in some areas like London by the early 1960s back to two letters and one to four numbers but reversed like 1-9999ML for example. So someone decided to have a suffix letter every year from 1963 to identify the age of the vehicle but even then not every 1963 or 1964 vehicle has an A or B suffix. An island in Scotland in 1963 was still using SJxxxx with so few new vehicles. The year suffix letter did not use I, O, Q, U, and Z but O and U was used in the two and three area letters! From 2001 with the AB51CDE sequence Z is also used. Offensive combinations not issued were BUM, FUK, SEX and also GOD (I cant imagine a clergyman wanting that registration). Yet POO could be offensive that was issued. I've seen a few vehicles including a brown Reliant Robin POO940R could also mean POOR! SHT almost SHIT was also issued. I've seen cars with the registrations VAN and BUS. And a motorbike CAR. And even a Hillman Imp BMW. BMW749L was a Rover 2000 or 3500, and BMW751L was a Ford Escort, a long scrapped vehicle would have been BMW750L before the future flagship BMW car was intoduced.
A family friend had a new Hillman Hunter in 1978.S…SHT ,as kids we pointed out the letters & thought it funny. When the plates got dirty we inserted an I.
I think it's quite hard to explain British number plates to the uninitiated, so well done!
When I was a youngster back in 1972 it was possible to reserve a number prior to it being issued. I was living in London then and the London codes at that time were JD. I was able to reserve PJD (my initials) followed 2L, L being the year, 1972. Unfortunately someone had already blagged the number 1. I was very proud of that plate which I had on a BSA motorcycle. This was in the days before personalised number plates became a huge financial business.
C00L
I hope you still own that plate!
My initials match yours 👍
I think JD was an East Ham code, some London long Routemaster buses, (RML) had JJD, ***D in 1966,
I like the VLT on a bus
@@des_smith7658 Yes Mate, London Transport reserved the SLT for the four prototypes, ,SLT 56 to SLT 59 for the first four, then VLT, WLT, CLT(reversed along with DYE, ie 776 DYE, RM 1776) then ALD and ALM with a B suffix, then CUV with a C, then NML on an E, and finally SMK 760F,( RML 2760), but never beat the 7000 odd RT Family Buses built during, and after the War, exotic letters like EYK FJJ, FXT, HLX, KYY, LLU,NXP, and OLD for the very last RT. (may have left some out,)
Many Municipal Vehicles also reserved blocks of Registrations, I remember many London Borough of Haringey Dustcarts registered HUL***K.
This video needs a million views. No one is providing this kind of information. 💯
I'm glad you've done this video. I've lost count how many times I've explained this to the younger generation 👍
You forgot one British plate oddity. You use the same car plate in the back of your trailer. Most of the other world have different plates and registration for trailers.
Yep.
In Spain you also have that if the trailer isn't supposed to carry more than 750kG of weight
You can also transfer a plate onto another car you own, or can gift it, so long as it does not make the car appear newer than it is. For example my dad bought a car in the early 1960s with an old Surrey plate of 4 numbers + 2 letters. This got transferred onto every car he subsequently owned and not long after his passing when my mum stopped driving she gifted it to me and its now on a 2014 car
Even as a self-confessed number plate nerd, I admit this is a difficult subject to make engaging. But you've presented this really well!
I'd wondered what the British system was, only to find out there were multiple systems. I'd heard presenters talking about "K" plates or "M" plates, but had no idea what they were talking about. I'm more informed now, but still just as confused. Thanks for trying.
Love the comment on newer black plates - subscribed on that basis alone!
11:29 wow! This felt personal and I don’t even have black and white plates 😂
Thanks for explaining, i have noticed at lot UK YT with car content identified cars by number plates. Australia with 6 states n 2 territories all have different colour plates n letters/numbers order. Some states/territories have slogans at bottom of the number plate. Some states/territories have special plates government plates for government vehicles, personal plates, euro style plates, interstate plates for trucks or known as federal plates.
As an American; I appreciate the explanation, interesting system.
Utterly fascinating, informative, beautifully scripted and beautifully edited video. Amazing work! Some really interesting tidbits in there I had no idea about!
thanks Ed. I've saved this one to watch a few times over. being a child of the 60s and 70s the letter prefix and suffix systems were instinctive. when they changed to the modern system with 2 registrations per year the vehicle age now takes some pondering. maybe after a few more watches it might become easier.
funnily enough, i remember the number plate assigned to my father's 1950's morris minor traveller from when i was a child in london the early 1960's. it was sold when we emigrated the canada.
but good old JRX 939 lived on in an old family photo of me washing it at the age of around 4 or 5!
*RX is a Reading plate.
@@onetonlandrover i was born in didcot and the morris was likely purchased around that area
Buses in London could have white on black plates up until around 1985/6. The last I can recall were C reg MCW Metrobuses
I'd always wondered whether the London buses were flouting the rules.
@@LostsTVandRadio not at all. They had quite a few quirks. Certain types, RT, RM were separated chassis and body on overhaul. Put back together using a different body or chassis and often received the registration from another vehicle. And all completely legal! Apparently!
Loved spotting registrations as a kid. Especially during the school holidays when the new plate would come out. I always tried to see how quickly I could see one. My personal record is 3 day before registration day: July 28th (P reg, 1996).
One of my first cars was a 1979 3.0S Capri running black plates. Originally issued with the white/yellow combination.
What's odd is all numbers belong to the Secretary of State and can be withdrawn for any reason, though normally it only happens if it's inappropriate and issued in error or became inappropriate over time. A famous example being BO11 LUX that the DVLA sold, then forced the driver to remove it.
Many years back I saw BOL 1K on a Renault and thought at the time how is that allowed 😮
Great video. The old system of area identifying letters was generally codes rather than abbreviations, many areas and Cities were very proud of their codes, JN for Southend on Sea, DL for the Isle of Wight, and many others, it was all there for us kids, listed in Dad's AA Members' Handbook, hours of fun out on the road spotting vehicles from different places.
Great explanation. I think the people at the Revell and Italeri model kit companies should look at this video because they always get UK plates wrong.
If you count DVLA auctions, there are still registrations being issued in every format used since 1903!
Technically Q was used to indicate a vehicle where the age could not be determined, common at one time on ex military vehicles, former breakdown trucks etc.
I've seen military now have a different system yet again. I think it's Number-Number Letter-Letter Number-Number. Often with 3 lines of text, and the old black background plates.
@dcarbs2979 Been that way for at least 25+ years, the last lot of Land Rovers (1998) are in the "new" format (AA11BB)
Q was also used for temporary registrations often on Vehicles belonging to foreign Embassies only here for a year or less or new vehicles that will be exported by driving them to destination country and registered there. Trade plates only recognised in Great Britain.
I grew up in Warrington in the 70s. ED was the code for vehicles registered in Warrington.
Hence all Warrington Buses having ED plates
Fascinating video. Thank you. I’ve had lots of different company cars over the years and couldn’t tell you what any of the registrations were but I can always remember the registration number of my dad’s Ford Prefect which he had from the 50s to 1968. It was 3 letters 3 numbers. I enquired about buying the number as personalised plate. Unfortunately I found out the number is scrapped when the car is scrapped. But yeah. Great video!
Back in the depths of time the Post Office was the only one allowed to use GPO - PO being a West Sussex registration. Then in the gradual take over by Swansea a lot of the localised registration letters were just dropped and all sorts of plates appeared, noticeably in West Sussex we were inundated with YJ a Dundee plate!!!! When are you going to try the Army registration system😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Loved it. Numberplate history is right up my street. However, if I had to do a video about Portuguese numberplate a it would be a very long one!
In Germany we have regional coding with one, two or three letters in one block then another zwo letters and up to four numbers. You can always tell the place where the car is registered - and if you move you get a new plate. Big citys have one or two letters, rural areas three - so it is always entertaining that we city dwellers invent funny meanings for our friends's plates from the countryside (when they feel uneasy driving in the big big city ;-)
Ed, you should do a follow-up on how both private/cherished plates and the Northern Ireland plate system/history works - especially as NI plates are a popular private plate option for UK mainland cars!
Here in the US it is relatively easy and inexpensive in most states to obtain a personalized/cherished plate. For example, my first car in NI was a 1973 Wolseley 1300 with the County Antrim reg of GIA478. Unfortunately we let this slip away at the time when the Wolseley was sold for scrap in the late 80s and this plate lived on attached to an Alfa Romeo for some time, before finally lapsing completely.
According to the DVLA (I enquired!), there are no plans to offer lapsed plates again to the market.
So, I did the next best thing - I went to my local motor vehicle registration authority in Florida and verified that GIA 478 was an available combination and paid a mere $100 to have that as my vehicle registration here!
You can't even get a customized license plate in Portugal. Yours are awesome.
That Rover 75 plate would be a pain to make (we make plates at work). Jaguars have their own size rears, but at least they're rectangular, not curved.
I'm not sure how the printer would pull it through, and cutting one to shape afterwards would be hard. Don't think Jepsons even make those acrylics.
The S-Type (I think uniquely), matches the Rover 75 aperture. Both models were released together, so it was probably thought to be a growing trend. AFAIK, they are the only 2 models with that plate shape. I have had both!
Wikipedia has excessive detail if anyone wants to go for a deep dive! Far harder to follow than Twin Cam's description, but for some intrigued it will fill an hour or so!
Great intro to this weirdly interesting topic!
You mention offensive combinations, and of course the likes of BUM and SEX have always been banned, but also GOD.
When the three letter codes came out in 1932 the UW area (London, I think) brought out DUW codes, completely oblivious to the fact that Duw is the Welsh word for God.
Nowadays, to be on the safe side, plates have to be inoffensive in English, Welsh and Gaelic.
Some have always slipped through! I remember around 20 years ago Top Gear did a segment about them.
I remember one Escort rally car plate starting with letters POO.
My current car ends in CVM. A standard combination, but I went to a busy drive thru a few weeks back, and when it’s busy, they write the last three letters so they know which car it’s going to.
I got home, and the first thing everyone in my house wanted to know was who thought it was a funny idea to write CUM on the receipt.
There are so many banned combinations, you can't keep up. J1HAD is a sign of modern times.
The letter after the S on Scottish plates starts from the south at SA and works its way north to SY. Glasgow (SA to SJ), Edinburgh (SK to SO), Dundee (SP to ST), Aberdeen (SU to SW) and Inverness (SX and SY). I'm from Aberdeen and it's rare to see a plate starting SU because all the SU51es and SU54ns buy them all. Fun fact: SN07 was never used because of snot, so Edinburgh got TN07 in 2007.
This is such a convoluted, confusing system. It makes no sense to me. Thank you for explaining it.
I love license plates, spotting ones from different countries, regional and age codes etc
I ended up watching this to the end. Nice work
One of the quirks is that after 1990 or before 2001 6 character plates were no longer assigned to new cars. If you do find one and it is not a personal plate then it signifies that the car was registered new with a personal plate and thus never gained a unique age-related one of it's own. When the personal plate is transferred off the car a 6 digit one is assigned with the correct age marker so it's easy to tell that the plate is not original at time of first registration. Since 2001 though cars registered with a personal plate initially have a standard number assigned to them but only in the background at the DVLA and won't appear on records until the personal plate is transferred.
That's interesting, although I'm not sure that's true. I bought a new car in Winchester, and put my personal plate on it. When I sold it, it was assigned an Isle of Wight plate (HW), despite never having gone to the Island.
@@cjmillsnun that would be a car registered after 2001 then, the 6 digit thing was dropped on the switch to the current style plates. It only applied for the last decade of Prefix plates.
@@cjmillsnun Since the local offices all closed, re - registrations are no longer geographical; you get allocated one of whichever block DVLA are issuing at the time (from year-end gaps or whole unused series)
That is a crackin piece of info Neil! The only car in the family that had 6 digits was my granda's used 99 Mondeo. He bought it in around 2002 and was the second owner so he would've been the first person to run around with the T plate on it. Weirdly he replaced the plate with his own private plate in 2005 which was also a 6 digit T plate.
Ed, when did you get a Red BMW, it's parked just to the right of the extension ladder.
ED, I have a old plate hanging up in our garage "in CA USA." The plate is silver on black, its made of aluminum and has QB 9009 on it. What would the history of that plate be? I picked it up at an auto swap meet YEARS ago. Another great watch.
It was always cool to be able to choose your number plate from a selection in a book assigned to the dealership when purchasing a brand new car.
It’s a shame you still can’t do this!
The closest I got was when I bought a new Chevy Aveo in 2008. The dealer had 4 or 5 identical pre-reg'd cars with 20-30 miles on the clock so I got to choose my plate. I went with DKO so I could call the car Dicko.
Interesting video Ed and well explained. Not easy our seemingly bonkers systems that have changed several times. In terms of the older plates and town/city identifiers, local to me in West Yorkshire was HD for Dewsbury, CX as well as VH for Huddersfield and JX for Halifax, none of which you’d call exactly obvious! There again on the latest system G signifies Kent; apparently we all know Kent is referred to as the Garden of England… Personal plates are quite a thing now of course. I quite like the old prefix letter for the date plates for looking a bit less fussy, so have one on my current car. The plate would actually make it 1984, but in reality it’s a 2021 model.
Of course, there was a different approach used before 1963, and military vehicles can have a different system.
Complicated as it may be, still a much better system than here in Sweden where the number plates literally mean nothing. Up until 1972 however we had initial letters on the plates signifying the county in which the car was registered.
Until the changeover in 2001 we were familiar with those time-honoured geographical codes. GL, AF and CV for Cornwall, WP and NP for Worcestershire, FH, AD and DG for Gloucestershire etc.
Unfortunately those codes stay hard wired in our memories so now we tend to misinterpret the 'new' plates.
IIRC, the issue frequency changed towareds the end of the prefix letter year issues, as they wanted to get to the new system before the old system ran out (i..e. got to Y reg on an anual-issue basis), so X & Y registrations were issued in 6-month intevrals, consequently, there aren't many X or Y plate cars about compared to, say, P, V or W.
I wish we had the different colour for front and rear in BC. Our plates are otherwise designed to be perfect for a culture of fast mountain driving (easily legible, distinctly reflective, distinct logo (based on the flag) used in place of a dash separator so the number can be read and unmistakably identified as "ours" all in one glance even at night in the fog on a twisty road) but nobody thought to make them directional. Maybe it's because we used to have big reflective pastel coloured stickers on the rear but now that's gone I can actually appreciate the UK idea.
Its also widely believed that any plates beginning SF are most likely to be undercover police cars in Scotland as most of them come through the same registry office
Aye, I believe that! Used to see a few base model Astra MK4s on SF plates. Black bumpers and two aerials were the main giveaway!
My 1st car was Cav.2.0i GLS
E635 KEH. The Cumbria plates were the best though.
Lets not forget other formats like diplomatic plates and millitery vehicles haveing different letterings
Has anyone noticed that the vast majority of cars reg'd since 2001 (so 99% of what you see on the road) have at least one U V W X Y or Z in the last 3 letters? Once I spotted it, I couldn't stop seeing it everywhere! The current system is handy though. You can sometimes know what sort of a life the car has had by the plate. Buying a relatively new car with a far away area code? Could be higher mileage as it may travel a lot. Buying an 20 year old Yaris in the north of Scotland with SY at the start? It's probably not had many owners, but could be rotten because of the crap weather.
Excellent video.
I have several "cherished" plates on various vehicles.
It always amuses me though, that the DVLA have a bit of a double standard.
They will encourage you to buy a plate that says a certain word, thing, or sentence if you bunch the letters up. But then, when you buy it and display it spacing it the way you should to make it show the word you bought it for, they then fine you for doing so!!!
A tad hypocritical, methinks.
For example: SHE1K.
Legally, it can only be written and displayed as SHE 1 K.
Or COM1C, that Jimmy Tarbuck had, or MAG1C for Paul Daniels.
COM 1 C and MAG 1 C was how they had to be displayed.
Also, I love it when the pen pushers miss an obvious "rude" one that slips through the net.
Preston licencing office allowed PN15 to be used and I've seen lots of "interesting " combinations.
PN15 BYG. PN15 BOY
PNI5 MAD etc, etc.
When I saw the first one, I remember thinking "Oops, someone messed up there".
Many thanks for a great video.
I'm old enough to remember the "new" reflective white & yellow plates being introduced and the new game on the bus was counting how many new plates you'd seen on a bus trip to the shops
Buses swap bodies with out the need for reregistration
@des_smith7658 ....,I'm not talking about bus plates I'm talking about going into town on a Saturday with our parents and counting how many cars or vans etc had the new style plates fitted
@@petersmith7126 er okay
Marvellous! How very British ! Great explanation Ed.
Coding information into identifiers has fallen out of fashion. UK plates are longer than they need to be for this reason. And making the year explicit creates those busy times for dealers. Most countries (well France and NZ at least) just use a national series. Next new car gets the next number in the series (some unused for various reasons). You can still tell the age. And location is pretty meangless because cars can relocate without changing the plates. France changed from location based plates about 2010. So why all that ongoing UK complication? Online databases mean that informatrion about a vehicle can be easily made accessible.
I've wondered why not make them random within the national pattern? Then the system lasts for ever.
I notice that many European countries seemiongly copy either UK or French pattern.
Because the immediacy of that information is useful for everyone. By looking at my BMW, I could tell when buying it that it had lived on the south coast for its whole life, and since the six month changeover came in, dealers don’t now see a rush like the used to.
Number plates are designed to be read at a glance. The vast majority of plates remain in the same location. If you witness a hit and run for example, it’s quite simple to be able to remember the plate as it will have a familiar feel to it.
@@TwinCam Not quite a big a rush. It used to be about 1/4 of all cars registered were on 1st Aug. It's slightly more even now but there is still a slight rush / peak at new registration dates. Of course they aren't 'new' for quite so long anymore.
I think my favourite plates are (note I never owned these) TAX 1 and CAB 1.
Great summary of pretty much all of the quirks and details!
Also, silver on black on cars made after about 72 looks just wrong to me!
Would look pretty sweet on a black Mk.1 Granada.
I can still remeber 2 of my Dad`s car number plates YYT446 and 750MOB the latter being a MK111 Zodiac.
The whole yellow white thing was basically because a group of MPs were trying to use a debate on it to filibuster until the end of session blocking a vote on giving women equal voting rights.
What are you on about? Women have been able to vote since 1928 and everyone knows they didn't' have colour back then.
Showing my age the leading year single letter (2 decades) was preceded by a year letter trailing for 2 decades I do remember these later ones,L earliest. Before that I believe were a number group and letter group (20 available letters) starting from still current A1 worth over 100k. ie 1 letter one number that expanded to 3 letter and 3 number, I do vaguely remember reading these were flipped around ie reversed groupings.
Frag A1 plate has £5 million valuation!
I think the new Alfa Romeo Junior is the first Alfa not to have offset front plates for a long time, if ever. Did the manufacturer have dispensation to have this arrangement or is there no legislation surrounding the positioning of the plate ?
It just has to be within the front area of the car (the windscreen is not allowed but the scuttle is) and wholly visible from the front over a certain angle, kit cars and supercars are the usual ones to have offset plates.
Seen quite a few big V8's with the green strip 😄
Exactly the same system in Hong Kong.
Who could have known that something as burocratic as Number Plates can be interesting.
Canadian here, I have a british plate question. As a dedicated listener to the Smith and Sniff podcast, I've heard them joking about "3D plates" and other options that people seem to think are tasteless.
Can anyone explain this? I imagine the 3D thing is the raised text seen on some plates towards the end of the video but what's wrong with it?
The GB was changed to UK unilaterally without consulting the international body that controls vehicle country identification plates so if any country one is driving through wants to be awkward over a UK plate they can be as not internationally recognised. Countries such as the Isle of Man, Guernsey and Jersey are not part of the UK so still use GBM.GBG and GBJ. GBI still used by Northern Ireland as the correct name is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The EU had nothing to do with it and recognise the GB plate. The EU flag could have just been replaced on the blue stripe with the Union Flag retaining the GB.
Ed!
Did you see that barn find of Metros in Italy??
TomDrives just put up a video about it today.
Great again.
To those of a certain age,black plates just don’t look right on ‘73 to ‘80 cars.I also despair when I see the narrower font used for a new set of plates on a classic.Rant over!
Enjoyed as usual but I am still a bit puxxled, but perhaps that's because I have an old brain - or because he rattled through the idiot board.! Lol But I wil watch it gain and take notes to aid my feeble cognition! Thanks for you efforts on our behalf. Rob
Of course you can use any number plate on your vehicle from 1903 as long as it doesn't make your vehicle look newer than it is.
'M' is Manchester and also Liverpool (Merseyside)
Though technically yes, in practice not quite. Liverpool, though assigned M for Merseyside, generally doesn’t use that code, instead opting for more local codes such as D for Deeside and P for Preston.
It's funny how main dealer info on a reg, seems to enhance the car value, yet a sticker along the bottom with something like..'Economy car sales ltd ' does the opposite.
@Grahamvfr At some point there’s a changeover between people viewing it as dirty advertising that could do with being removed, and it becoming a piece of history we want to show off 😂
@@TwinCam I get that hahaha,
@@TwinCam quite true. City rivalry may play a bit over there.
You didn't mention that you can actually buy an old plate including the ones like XY1234 and stick it to your new car to look more posh.
I used to see V5 USE reg
This is why I'm more a fan of Irish plates, much simpler. Year-county-number
But one important question wasn’t answered. Why do 4d plates even exist?!
They don't exist on this plane, they are 4D, they break the concepts of the physical, spiritual and atomic boundaries. They in short exist as an anomaly, something that we shouldn't try to explain.
The government have literally made a fortune from selling previously unissued and defunct private number plates. By utilising all previous systems to make different letter/number combinations, they hold regular auctions. Short and name plates, sell for enormous amounts of money. There is also a secondary market, where people sell their private plates through brokers. A vehicle has to be taxed and have a current mot, for a number to be transferred. However, numbers can also be temporarily held on a DVLA retention certificate.
I think it only has to be taxed and motd within the last 5 years. I've definitely transferred the plate on a vehicle that had been off the road and sorned for 3 years.
Now I am totally vonfused. :)
What about imported cars??
I'd try to explain greek license plate, but that would probably need 45 minutes at least 😂
London Transport buses were still being fitted with white on black number plates well into the 1980s. Another anomaly.
Where I like, all our license plates are made by inmates, not "mates" but inmates.....
I saw a beautiful 1978 T reg Ford Escort mk2 RS2000 today, looked like a nut and bolt rebuild, to my horror it was on black and silver plates in the post 2001 font, kind of ruined the whole car for me!
What about private plates?
They all still fall into one of the formats described, but might not indicate when the car was registered and are more likely to be transferred to another vehicle from their original one.
Why is it so important to be able to estimate the year of manufacturer of a car from 25yards? It's bizarre.
It's not, that's just an eye sight test, if you cannot read a plate from that distance then you need vision correction, glasses or contact lenses.
A friend of mine doesn't like Alfas because the plate isn't in the centre. 🙄
Mv isnt Manchester its merseyside
It's not quite possible for anyone to make plates. The makers need to be licensed and display their postcode and makers name discreetly on the front of the plate. Cloned plates often have none of these markings and are sourced via the internet as 'display plates'.The police look out for this.
I think the main point was anyone can obtain the license and it isn't a govt body that makes them.
Does this mean my 1961 rover has had a plate change? YCJ118?
Probably not. What makes you think it has?
YCJ118 would have been issued between April and September 1961 in Herefordshire. (The oldclassiccar website has a list of pre 73 registration codes/areas/dates including ‘dateless’ ones)
Incorrect. In 2051, the plate will be mirrored to the opposite side. Ie AAA 01AB
ireland has the best plates imo
t.y. !
you say 10 think you mean 3, in 2021 and no i do not buy this "legal black plate til 1980" suffix L latest, no M N P R and certtainly NO prefix A-Y but that isnnt the only bug i have for pre2001, post2001 font on a pre2001 reg,
Enjoyed that but wouldn’t it have made more sense to start in 1903.
The vast majority of people who watch this video won’t be interested in some antiquated system. They’ll want to know how they work today. So it only makes sense to work backwards unless I want alienated viewers.
@ fair enough
@@TwinCamI dare say you’ll have alienated a few who have black/silver plates on their ‘73 - ‘80 cars. But they’re wrong, anyway 😉
I think you might've overlooked the Isle Of Man, which has number plates written "backwards".
So for example, instead of D68 LMC, it would be written LMC 68D, just like the suffix plates.
Not sure about how they displayed pre-1983 registered cars, but I know that between 83 and 01, they produced them using this format.
Guernsey is just numbers, Jersey is J plus numbers. Alderney is AY plus numbers. Sark probably just paints something on the side of the horse or tractor (cars are banned).
The Isle of Man is not part of the UK, let alone Great Britain, to which Ed said he was limiting the scope of this video
@@paulqueripel3493 Don't forget, Guernsey has acrylic plates, but still in the old monochrome style
Manx plates are in the same format as the pre-2001 GB plates, except that the suffixes/prefixes don't denote any particular year, and either the second and third letters are MN or the whole code is MAN.
I appreciate I may have missed a detail somewhere.
@@MakerfieldConsort you could indeed be right.
I made my observations from a VHS cassette called "The CompLete Driving Video" ("L" in "Complete" spelled with a red capital "L" to indicate that it was a learner driver video).
One portion in particular which involved a police driver giving a running commentary, showed lots of cars on the island, and I always remember the cars that appeared to have the plates written in said format.
11:25; always wondered why idiots were fitting black plates to later 70s cars. And I agree with you wholeheartedly, look so naff.
Das mit dem EU Kennzeichen hat sich ja erledigt 😕
The EU is over 😊
Initially registraion plates from 1903, one letter and one to four numbers, A1-9999. After that two letters AB1-9999, then three letters and one to three numbers, AAB1-999 then BAB1-999, CAB1-999. But depending which area had more new vehicles Y would be reached more quickly than in other areas and sometimes not all. After that it was one to three numbers before the three letters 1-999AAB for example. And in some areas like London by the early 1960s back to two letters and one to four numbers but reversed like 1-9999ML for example. So someone decided to have a suffix letter every year from 1963 to identify the age of the vehicle but even then not every 1963 or 1964 vehicle has an A or B suffix. An island in Scotland in 1963 was still using SJxxxx with so few new vehicles. The year suffix letter did not use I, O, Q, U, and Z but O and U was used in the two and three area letters! From 2001 with the AB51CDE sequence Z is also used.
Offensive combinations not issued were BUM, FUK, SEX and also GOD (I cant imagine a clergyman wanting that registration). Yet POO could be offensive that was issued. I've seen a few vehicles including a brown Reliant Robin POO940R could also mean POOR! SHT almost SHIT was also issued. I've seen cars with the registrations VAN and BUS. And a motorbike CAR. And even a Hillman Imp BMW. BMW749L was a Rover 2000 or 3500, and BMW751L was a Ford Escort, a long scrapped vehicle would have been BMW750L before the future flagship BMW car was intoduced.
A family friend had a new Hillman Hunter in 1978.S…SHT ,as kids we pointed out the letters & thought it funny.
When the plates got dirty we inserted an I.