My car has a 13 plate and (according to my dad, the dealership and everyone else who knows how they work) was made in 2013. Sounds simple until I try to think about by dad’s last car which was a 56 plate and I highly doubt it was made in 1956 or 2056.
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Current UK license plates all follow a standard format.
The first two letters are a region code for where the car was registered.
The following two numbers denote the year. UK registrations are split into two blocks, one running from March through to the end of August, and one from September to February.
The first digit refers to a combination of the decade and month – 0 is a March-August registration in the 2000’s, 5 is a September-February registration in the 2000’s. For the 2010’s this increments by one to 1 and 6, the 2020’s to 2 and 7 and so on.
The second digit refers to the exact year so a 64 plate will be a car registered between August and February in 2014/2015.
The final three letters are a random identifier, with no specific meaning to them.
Before this system was introduced, there were previous versions. The last used an initial letter to denote the year (originally one letter per year, changing to two letters per year to try and spread out new car purchases a bit more as a lot of people tend to buy new cars to align with an updated number plate). Followed by three random numbers and three random letters (with the letters often being broadly regional).
So a car with a number plate of this format starting with a P meant it was made in 1997/1998.
Before this, the same method was used in reverse – three random letters, the random numbers and a single letter to identify year.
And before this, there were even earlier systems in place using letter codes for the area and random number codes, but with no year marker.
You will be able to find all of these formats in the roads still, either on cars of the appropriate era, or on newer cars that have been given previous number plates – it is possible to move number plates between cars, so you can keep an existing plate and refuse it on a newer car, or buy a plate with a desirable combination to use on your car. The important detail here is that you can only use a plate that is of equal or older age than the vehicle it is being used on. This means you cannot use a brand new plate on an older vehicle to make it appear to be newer than it is, only an old plate to make it appear older.
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