Alrighty, I've got a bit of an odd question for all of you as someone not from the UK, how do the letter regs on plates work over there? I see talk about Letter regs (J, K reg etc.) and some letters used as selling "pros" for ads. From what I can kind of briefly find it signifies the year the plate was issued, but I'm still a tad confused as to the significance of them/how they work and how they might be a bit of a selling "advantage/rare" for a car, here in Canada our plates are a bit boring so hopefully someone can shed some light for me! I find it all super interesting and honestly pretty cool
Hello, Ring, The u.k. year-letter indication came into use in 1963, with a suffix 'A', though apparently it was only really used in London. For the first few years, the change to a new letter was made on January 1st, so the letter was definitive, e.g. my old boss's E-type Jaguar was obviously a 1966 car by its 'D' registration. The u.k. motor industry (there still was one at the time) lobbied to move the change-over to August 1st, which occurred in 1967. 'E' registrations were only issued for 7 months, afterwards the trade had to account for the mid-year changeover, such as "H, '69" or "H, '70" when describing a vehicle. But they asked for that. Come the early 80's, with the end of the alphabet approaching (ambiguous letters like 'I' , 'O', 'U' and 'Z' weren't used), the decision was made to use a prefix year identifier instead, again beginning with 'A', in 1983. Cue cartoons with young women complaining 'He said he had an A-reg car, but I didn't realise it was twenty years old'. Again ambiguous letters weren't used, with the changeover remaining August 1st. Dealerships used to have midnight events, where customers could drive off their car with brand-new registration at the earliest legal moment. The end for this system came at the turn of the millennium, so not quite 20 years. The allocation period was altered for 'S', August 98 to February 99, the remaining letters were then used for 6 months each, until 'Y' ended in August 2001. The current system is still a six-month allocation, beginning with two district letters, e.g. any pair with 'S' as the first letter is Scottish, or with 'C' is Welsh. The year identifier is now two numbers, the only numbers used. The changeovers are now March 1st and September 1st. For the first interval the 'true' year numbers are used, for the second it's an 'offset' of 50, e.g. 2017 used '17' then '67'. I speculated about buying a new car in 2007, so that I could tell people "I remember buying a new '57' Chevrolet". So, anyone registering a new vehicle in 2001 (and every succeeding year) could/will receive one of three different identifiers; for those first two months it was the final prefix 'Y', from March through August the new '01', then '51' through to the following February. As always, jokers tried to flout the yearly identifier; around the corner from me, a f**d es**rt had what looked at first glance like an 01, suspicious in itself given the car, which was in fact Y 501 ###, not YS 01 ###. Why the hell did he bother? Hang on, it may have been Y 502 masquerading as YS 02, making it even more suspicious. With the current system, there is for the first time since 1967 a definitive indication of the year of registration, but only during the 6-month middle period (currently '01' to '22'). Anything else could be an overlap with the year preceding or following. F'r instance, 2022 began with the left-over '71' from last year, changed to this years '22' in March, and again to '72' in September, which will be issued until next February. Meaning that the trade still has to list vehicles with the number on the plate and the actual year, e.g. 'Vauxhall Astra, 54/04' (a car registered towards the end of 2004). Btw, it was a while before I saw any '72's last month. The very first was an electric vehicle, with a green tab at the left-hand end of the plate. The district letters were 'AA', I thought 'it'll need a lot of those to get much speed up'. From a collectible point of view, I understand that some vehicles have sought-after registration 'blocks' or groups with the same year letter and three-letter group. Such as launch batch modern Mini, I think they were a block within the series Y ### BOL. If you're familiar with 70's police series 'The Sweeney', the Consul GT which featured is NHK 295M. It would've originally been one of F**d's press fleet, the 'HK'* being an Essex (rather than London) letter group. Similar cars from this series could be seen in a repair manual of the time. F**d supplied a white Cortina 1600E to each member of the defending England World Cup soccer squad in 1970, with as I recall FWC 1 (to 30) H. * AFAIK most of the district identifiers changed with the introduction of the current system; the suffix and prefix systems used the groups already allocated, e.g. my 1962 Capri was registered before the year letter system started up, with the Cardiff identifier 'TG' (### RTG), which remained in use until 2001 italics show substantial changes to correct an error re. the current allocations (and to reduce usage of the f-word)
Ditto to GVK! Awesome post! I appreciate the insight into it especially regarding the collectible aspect of it! You guys have some awesome plate history in my opinion, and its quite visible just based on the wikipedia page comparison to my province alone lol! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_British_Columbia)
Thank you both, though I've had to correct an error I made in haste. Another batch of launch vehicles I recall since is the original Land Rover Discovery. These were H (or is it G?) ### WAC. A small enough group of cars, such as the u.k. contingent of Gordon-Keebles (a fibreglass GT with Corvette engine and transmission), are probably known to the enthusiast owners by their registrations and/or production numbers, e.g. "BUX ### C?' That's number ##, it used to be owned by.." followed by maybe more than one name. Conversely, someone around here owns an actual 1957 Chevrolet, which there's a rumour was bought by Ronald Reagan as a gift for Nancy Reagan. The local paper reported that this arose while it still had a u.s. licence plate on. Along the lines of 'Mrs. Reagan had one with a licence like that'. That's not really likely, is it? As I understand it, unless someone pays up each year to keep a 'vanity' plate, their car will have a different number each year.
May I add that in Somerset they didn't start in the 60s with A, or B as a suffix,but started possibly late B period or C , 1965. They then proceeded to issue A suffix to vehicles which had their original plate transferred, so my 1959 minor was cya406a or similar, was 30 years ago. Dvla then started to do non transferable plates in the 90s and so it got usk291 on it, and a lot of older classics have got that style of plate number now, but are a valueless plate but look period.
True, local authorities didn't necessarily adopt the year-letter system straight away. And once the centralised Dvla (Driver & Vehicle Licencing Authority) or rather its predecessor Dvlc got going, it wasn't always so strict about the age criteria. A 1960 Cadillac I know of has a suffix-A, even though tailfins were dead passe in the u.s. by 1963. Though as far as I can tell, it came to Britain in 1978, around the same time as yet another '57 Chevrolet, which I saw with the then current suffix-T. I've just remembered a temporary scare for classic car owners in the early/mid 80's, due to the records being computerised, the introduction of the 'new' prefix system, or both. Owners of vehicles that weren't in use had to make sure that their vehicle(s) det**ls were transferred in order to retain the existing registration. It wasn't as drastic as having to actually put the vehicle into use, though. The YA in the registration allocated to your Minor would be Somerset, if not specifically Yeovil. That former employer I mentioned found it worthwhile to buy company vehicles from the dealer Seatons of Yeovil, even though he ran a London company. Hence we drove es***ts, broomsticks and mondos with YA, YB, YC and YD identifiers.
Yep, ya, yb and yc were Somerset reg designation, generally the whole county as far as I remember. OK was the Birmingham area I believe, hence the 'first' mini being 621AOK, the ERA turbo I owned was F748XOK as it too was one of Rover's own cars and a development vehicle, a shame one of the latter owners put a cherished plate on it, but presumably the original is on retention still. On a note about local area registration, when Weston-super-Mare became moved in the county movement, some dealers there would still go to the Somerset office and log their cars, rather than the newer alternative.
Ring, If you can bear any more on former u.k. official stuff, how about 'tax discs'? Rather than issuing new licence plates every year as proof of payment, in Britain every vehicle used to need a Road Fund Licence disc in the front windshield, on the left side so that it could be read by anyone standing on the pavement/sidewalk. Poseurs sometimes tried applying it behind the central rear-view mirror. I used to state that 'the only thing in any window of my own car is the tax disc, dealers' branding comes out as soon as I get home (if not before)'. I only recall terms of 6 and 12 months, though I understand shorter periods were once available. You'd present yourself at the local Post Office, with an application form, insurance certificate, MoT (roadworthiness) certificate, for vehicles over 3 years old, and payment. With all that in order, the counter staff would take one of the current months' discs from a pad, and stamp it after filling in the details (vehicle registration, 6 or 12 months, taxation class ('Private' or 'PLG', Private/Light Goods) and fee paid. Then you'd detach the disc from its rectangular surround, as it came off the pad, by its perforations, and display it in the windscreen, often in a circular plastic sleeve/holder which adhered to the glass (sometimes even re-useably). Dealers often supplied them with their branding on, visible inside and out, with cars they sold. An 80's device I remember was a black plastic square; the base part with a circular opening stuck to the glass, while a slide-on cover allowed access to the disc. That's if you were bothered about tidiness, though. As long as the disc was displayed, sticky tape would do, the residue and danger of it falling down if/when sunlight or condensation degraded the tape were immaterial. And the sitcom entrepreneur Del Trotter drove his 'Robin Reliant' 3-wheel van for years with a 'Tax in Post' label in the windscreen (there was a postal option). Discs were valid until the final day of the month/year stated, so taxing tended to occur in the earlier days of the month; doing so towards the end of a month meant you'd be paying a months' rate for a few days. A disc could be surrendered for a refund, but only complete months remaining counted. If a disc was stolen ('joyriders' or 'twockers' would take the disc as a sort of scalp, for instance), a duplicate could be issued. During the 90's as I recall, Dvla used to include inserts with licence reminders, one of which showed how the police would request that a driver pulled over. This one had to be re-issued, since the police vehicle in the drawing didn't have a tax disc, besides the driver not wearing a seat belt, which was compulsory by then. The whole thing became sidelined by an on-line tax set-up, and the final discs were issued around a decade ago now, 2013/4 I think. Owners of classic vehicles often have a facsimile of the vehicles' first disc displayed (in some cases the actual item).
Interesting! Here in BC we actually just got rid of our similar system that would be considered the British Columbian tax discs in a way. We had stickers that would go on license plates as proof of insurance payment as it would have a color correlating it to the expiry date for yearly insurance validation, but as of May 1st of this year switched to online renewal and we don't have to use the stickers anymore which is quite nice!
