Martin Underwood wrote to uk.transport.london on Mon, 3 Jan 2005:


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"?

I think it was E that was the short year, if my memory serves me well.

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.

At the time, in the early 1960s, it had its own government at Stormont,
and was nowhere near running out of registrations, so no need to.

My husband (who comes from Northern Ireland) can still tell you where a
car with a NI registration comes from, and even I know a few of them: IW
is/was County L'derry, OI was Belfast (city), IJ was County Tyrone, I
think..... Anything with an I or a Z in it was either Northern Ireland
or the Republic.

Nowadays, of course, the Republic of Ireland has its own system, with a
number, a letter-code indicating the county of origin, and the year in
full.
--
"Mrs Redboots"
http://www.amsmyth.demon.co.uk/
Website updated 2 January 2005