My interest in private plates isn’t limited to buying and selling them, it includes their history. Little did I know that when I started out selling personalised number plates over 35 years ago that New Reg would become part of that history being the first company with an online presence!
With the new ‘74′ number plates just on the road and the ’25’ private registrations soon to be issued you may be interested as to how and why vehicle number plates are structured the way they are.
The sheer amount of vehicles on the road have led to some major alterations . So here is a quick look into the history of the number plates of Britain.
1903 – The Birth Of The Number Plate
The Motor Car Act is issued into force. Section 2 requiring every motor vehicle (including motorbikes) to be placed on an official register and to adorn an alphanumerical plate. This was in part due to an increase in vehicle accidents becoming more frequent; being able to identify vehicles became a necessity.
With the new ‘20’ number plates just around the corner you may be interested as to how and why vehicle plates are structured the way they are. There have been four major alterations to this system so far as registrations try to keep up with the sheer amount of vehicles on the road. So here is a quick look into the history of number plates of Britain.
One of the first of these new registrations issued, A 1, consisted of one letter and one number and belonged to Earl Russell, who is believed to have had his butler camp outside the registry office all night to ensure he got the plate he was after. While it would make sense that A 1 was the first number plate to be issued it is thought that Y 1 and DY 1 pre-date it.
These new plates didn’t identify the vehicle’s age but each area was allocated certain letters as their area code and the numbers on the registration plates were just issued in order so A 1 was issued in London and Y 1 and DY 1 were issued in Hastings.
Dateless number plates are now in very high demand due to how unique they are and the fact they hide the age of an older car for example and so are now sought after private plates. There are some combinations of number plates that were never used and DVLA will issue these into their private number plates auctions. Take a look at the following dateless private number plates examples available at NewReg.co.uk.
1920 – Local Councils Take Over Registrations
The Roads Act of 1920 saw the expansion of areas around the UK and different letters given to each council to issue on their vehicle plates. For example, London stuck with the letter A and up north my home town Lancashire was given B!
1950s – A Solution To The Motoring Boom
Car ownership increased dramatically between 1950 and 1970 and so as you can imagine it didn’t take long until the registration numbers were reaching their limit of combinations. This was countered simply by reversing the digits and letters, going instead from ‘ABC 123′ to ‘123 ABC’ but eventually these registration mark combinations also ran out.
1963 – Suffix Number Plates
The solution was the Suffix number plates system.
The Suffix system allowed for essentially a yearly re-use of each registration mark by adding a letter at the end of every number plate that changed each year to indicate the year the vehicle was manufactured. So ABC 1A in 1963, ABC 1B in 1964, ABC 1D in 1965 and so on.
Since 1903 everything had been done manually which meant it was very time consuming, leading to an over-hall of the entire system. This new system involved some much needed updated technologies such as the use of computers which improved the speed of police checks and registration details, among other areas.
1973 – Reflective Number Plates
Prior to this date physical number plates had only seen minimal changes to their black and silver design. But with 1973 came the requirement to have reflective number plates that had to be particular colours. The front number plate was to be black writing on a white background and the rear yellow background on the back.
1974 – DVLA
The Driver & Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) takes over, then know as The Department of Transport (DoT), removing vehicle registration responsibilities from local councils and working from Vehicle Registration Offices. Some number plate area codes were changed.
1983 – Prefix number plates
The Prefix system comes into play, moving the letter that indicates the year to the beginning of the registration.
There are three sections to this registration plate; the first being the yearly letter beginning with A in 1983, then a number followed by three letters. The first letter is random and provides variation to the number plates but the last two letters show where the vehicle was registered using its area code.
1989 – DVLA Personalised Registrations
DVLA (or DVLC as they were known as at the time) began selling private registration plates in December 1989 at their first ever auction. The first lot offered that day was 99 MG but the biggest private plates sale that day was 1 A which sold for a whopping £160,000!
1991 – DVLA Release A Prefix Private Number Plates for sale
When DVLA registered vehicles they withheld using numbers A1-A20 realising their desirability and so in 1990 offered these “private plates” for sale, eventually increasing the range to include other prefix registrations.
I launched New Reg to coincide with the A prefix private number plates being released and also made sure to purchase several private number plates myself.
Some became the talk of the town, for example A11 BLU which was assigned to my blue Peugeot 205 Dimma, A11 RED used by my brother on his matching red Peugeot 205 Dimma and A11 GTE which my friend and New Reg’s IT Guru / future director Jon Taylor used on his Vauxhall Astra GTE.
Within 12 months the H prefix private number plates were released and I purchased H11 STE for another of my cars!
2001 – Current Style Number Plates
In September 2001 the Current style numbers and private plates were introduced. Consisting of two letters used as a regional identifier , a two-figure age identifier and then three random letters.
This order and structure is used as Police evidence showed that people tend to remember letters over numbers. Plus, as we read from left to right it made sense to have the number plate local code at the beginning so that is in short how the current style registration plate works.
2020
2020 sees the introduction of green plates. These can only be displayed on electric vehicles and show a green flash on the left-hand side of the number plate similar to the regional flags that can also be used on a personalised number plate.
The Future of Number Plates
New technologies have led to massive changes since the very first motor car with in some cases a vehicle model being unrecognisable from their original version. The registrations they display as I’ve explained have also seen changes over the years. But what’s next? It’s a while off but will the current style continue as intended until 2099 and then be reversed or will a new system replace it?
Either way private number plates are here to stay!
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