"Clive D. W. Feather" wrote in message
...
In article , Martin
Underwood writes

Except only London used [the suffix] A.

I never knew that. So did all other parts of the country keep the older
formats (eg ABC 123, 123 ABC, AB 1234) for an extra year and then change
over in 1964 to ABC 123B? Typically British: change something, but don't
change it everywhere at the same time!

I know that initially the changover of letter occurred on 1 January, until
they realised that this caused a rush in car orders just as garages and
distributors were returning from their Christmas holidays. I believe the
change to August-to-July "years" was in 1966. So does that mean that:

A, B, C ran from Jan-Dec
D ran from Jan-Jul
E onwards ran from Aug-Jul

making D a short "year"?


Of the pre-1963 formats, was there any difference between the ABC 123, 123
ABC, AB 1234 formats other than that one gave way to another when an
individual authority had allocated all its numberplates? I ask because the
plot twist at the end of the film "The League of Gentlemen" hinges on an
observant boy noticing that the registration on the robbers' truck should
have related to a car rather than a lorry - does this mean that numberplates
were of a different format in the two cases?

Anyone know why Northern Ireland never adopted any of the year-letter
formats. I'd have thought the army would have wanted a unified system so
that British soldiers' private cars were not quite so obviously different
from Northern Irish residents' cars, so as to lessen the chance of them
being IRA targets.