Generally anyone interested in something as mundane as the registration plates on the front and back of all road vehicles is regarded as really sad, but I have to confess that I have always had a total fascination for them, ever since I got out of my pram and started pushing Dinky Toys around the floor.
I am tired of reading that anyone with a ‘personalised number’ (as they always now seem to be called) is nothing but an egotist and it never really seems to occur to most observers than anyone could possibly have an actual interest in such things.
As far as I am concerned they are part and parcel of the entirety of the car, and it really jars with me if something is not quite right. I see plenty of veteran and vintage cars with modern reflective plates, especially where the original early 20th century plate has been sold off for loadsamoney (as is the vogue these days) and simply replaced with a DVLA (the UK licensing authority) ‘age-related’ plate (which is never realistic to any observer who actually understands the system). To me it’s like watching a period drama with the heroine wearing a pair of Nike trainers along with her long frock! How can people be so unsympathetic?
One of the very first Dealers in car registration numbers is a guy I know locally, and I have criticized him on several occasions for turning what was originally a simple interest into a multi-million pound industry. Fifty or sixty years ago if you wanted a nice plate with your initials on you just went to the registration office and asked what they had. If you wanted AB 1 for instance, they might have said “Sorry, that one’s in use, but you can have AB 3 if you want”. You would pay £5 and that was it – it was yours! Now, the DVLA auction off such numbers, which go for huge sums (£500,000 for F1 anyone?!) or you go on the private transfer market where a number like AB 1 or AB 3 might go for £50/100,000.
The UK registration system dates from 1903, when 1 or 2-letter codes were allocated to local authorities to issue to all motorised vehicles. For example a code of AT was issued to my local authority, and then AT 1 to AT 9999 would be used up in sequence. By the early 1930’s some authorities had used up all such numbers, so it was decided that a sequential letter would be placed in front of the code, and in 1932 AAT 1 was issued; but to keep only 6 digits per plate AAT 999 would be followed by BAT 1 etc., up to YAT 999 (but excluding ‘I’ and ’Z’ which were reserved for Irish registrations and ‘Q’ which was for temporary registrations only).
By the late 1940’s however, some authorities had once more used up all the possibilities, so the numbers were reversed, mostly going back to the 2-letter codes then followed by the 3-letter ones, throughout the 1950’s. By the early 1960’s 9999 AT was followed by 1 AAT, but again some authorities had used up all the available numbers!
So it was time for a radical re-think, and some bright spark had the idea of retaining the whole original system but simply placing a year-letter suffix at the end, commencing in 1963 with ‘A’. Some authorities only started the following year, so locally AAT 1B was issued early in 1964.
Everyone loved the system, as it told the neighbours that you had a brand new car, whilst they were driving last year’s old junk! Of course, it meant no-one bought any cars at the end of the year, as they waited for the shiny new year-letter in January! The Motor Trade didn’t like this one bit, as it made them very busy over their Christmas and New Year break preparing cars to go out on 1st January, so they persuaded the Government to shift the year-letter changeover to 1st August, from August 1967 onwards. So ‘E’ only ran from 1st January 1967 to 31st July 1967, with ‘F’ running from 1st August 1967 to 31st July 1968.
In 1982 the final suffix letter ‘Y’ was used ( ‘Z’ as always was ignored) so the DVLA wondered what to do. They asked for ideas from the public (yes, really!) and as a Very Interested Party (or a Very Sad Person, depending on your point of view) I devised a whole new system which would allow many times as many combinations as simply using 3 letters and 3 numbers. I suggested that the local code would be followed by 2 numbers representing the year, then 3 letters rather than 3 numbers, which would create 17,576 combinations per code instead of only 999 using numbers. Thus a number from 1983 onwards might read AT83 ABC. And the whole lot could be repeated the following year just by increasing the number by 1! Millions of combinations per year would be possible! Does all this look familiar?
However, I concluded my proposal by saying that it was highly unlikely my system would be adopted, and the old system would simply continue in reverse. And from 1984 onwards that is exactly what happened, when numbers appeared like A123 AAT following on from AAT 122Y.
This worked very well up to 1999, when the Motor Trade decided they didn’t like the spike in sales in August at all, as preparing cars for delivery on 1st August interfered with their summer holidays, so it was decided that to avoid that and to try to avoid any spikes at all there would be 2 changes per year. Hence on March 1st 1999 ‘S’ changed to ‘T’ and then on September 1st 1999 ‘T’ gave way to ‘V’ (‘U’ was not used as the DVLA can’t trust the British to tell the difference between ‘U’ and ‘V’, unlike the rest of the world.)
This meant the letters ran out rather earlier than they might have done, and in 2000/1 ‘Y’ was issued as a prefix, meaning a whole new system would be needed.
After much thought (?) the DVLA decided to use a local 2-letter code, followed by 2 numbers representing the year, then followed by 3 letters. Does that look familiar?! All the 2 letter codes were changed to represent different, much larger areas, and to avoid the usual spikes and keeping up with the Joneses the first year-code would be ‘51’, used from 1st September 2001 to 28th February 2002. Then ‘02’ would be used from 1st March 2002 to 31st August 2002, followed by ‘52’ for the next 6 months, then ‘03’, then ‘53’ and so on and so on!
Of course, it goes without saying that the DVLA have no record of my original proposal, the new system being entirely their own idea…
This system remains with us today, and although there is plenty of scope for those 3 letters to represent initials, it’s actually very hard to tell whether they do or not as they don’t look any different from ones that don’t, so there has been something of a boom in the old-style of registration number, which remain legally in use, and there are always thousands for sale at vastly inflated prices to line the pockets of the Dealers.
Hence if you do get one of those dodgy ‘age-related’ plates the DVLA are so keen to dish out, the remedy is very easy – just go and buy one that looks right! But then most people consider that a waste of money, as it’s only an old car number plate, isn’t it?!
