"Martin Underwood" wrote in message
...

But once there would be far more offices, each with its own mark(s): now
they've merged the marks so you cannot tell so accurately where a car was
registered.

True. Then again, it had become quite meaningless anyway with large-scale
commercial registrations or with garage chains registering vehicles in their
head office area before shipping them to their salesrooms.

I know the situation in Yorkshire better than Anglia: at one time UA, UB,
UM
were Leeds, YG was Bradford, CX was Huddersfield and HL was Wakefield.
These
were merged so that all these letters signified "somewhere in West
Yorkshire". I think the size of the region covered was further increased
with the new-style AA05 BBB numberplates. I'm not sure why they even
bothered to use new letters: the A123 BCD format had a two-letter location
code (CD) so why not continue to use the same code in the new-style
numberplates? Methinks that they took the opportunity to rationalise
(merge)
some of the issuing offices at the same time.

Yes, Yorkshire is an oddity in the new system, in that the Yorkshire
registration district only covers South and West Yorkshire (YA to YO being
Leeds office and YP to YY being Sheffield office). For some reason East and
North Yorkshire are lumped in with Teesside and Tyneside as the North
registration district, split into three offices (NA to NM at Newcastle, NN
to NT at Stockton and NU to NY at Beverley).

And of course so many cars have personalised numberplates these days that
you often cannot tell anything about a car's age or place of "birth".

Whoever decided that '0' should represent March registrations and '5'
October? What happens if, at some time in the future, they decide to use
every month as a registration month?

I'd better shut up or you'll be thinking that I'm as obsessive as my mate
the walking look-up table ;-) Oh, too late...

I wouldn't dare suggest such a thing! Especially from someone who has the
registrations table saved in a Word document!! ;-))

Have a Happy New Year, Martin.

"Jack Taylor" wrote in message
. ..

"Martin Underwood" wrote in message
...

True. Then again, it had become quite meaningless anyway with large-scale
commercial registrations or with garage chains registering vehicles in
their
head office area before shipping them to their salesrooms.

And of course there's the notorious dodge used by most coach companies: they
register their coaches in Northern Ireland which for some strange reason has
never adopted any of the ABC 123A, A123 ABC or AB05 ABC formats used by the
rest of the UK - hence their coaches don't bear any recognisable clue about
their age, to prevent the punters worrying about travelling on 10-year-old
(but imacculate) coaches. Take a look at the next few coaches you see, and
you'll see that I'm right!

I know the situation in Yorkshire better than Anglia: at one time UA, UB,
UM
were Leeds, YG was Bradford, CX was Huddersfield and HL was Wakefield.
These
were merged so that all these letters signified "somewhere in West
Yorkshire". I think the size of the region covered was further increased
with the new-style AA05 BBB numberplates. I'm not sure why they even
bothered to use new letters: the A123 BCD format had a two-letter
location
code (CD) so why not continue to use the same code in the new-style
numberplates? Methinks that they took the opportunity to rationalise
(merge)
some of the issuing offices at the same time.

Yes, Yorkshire is an oddity in the new system, in that the Yorkshire
registration district only covers South and West Yorkshire (YA to YO being
Leeds office and YP to YY being Sheffield office). For some reason East
and
North Yorkshire are lumped in with Teesside and Tyneside as the North
registration district, split into three offices (NA to NM at Newcastle, NN
to NT at Stockton and NU to NY at Beverley).

And of course so many cars have personalised numberplates these days that
you often cannot tell anything about a car's age or place of "birth".

It probably says something about my personality, but if someone offered me a
personalised numberplate I'd say no thanks: if a code exists, it seems only
right to use it and not to buck the system. Plus I don't want my car to
stand out from all the rest.

Whoever decided that '0' should represent March registrations and '5'
October? What happens if, at some time in the future, they decide to use
every month as a registration month?

I presume that this possibility was considered and rejected when the
numbering scheme was planned. The code that they've used is quite cunning:
for vehicles registered between March and September, the two digits are
always the last two digits of the year; for vehicles registered between
September and March, the two digits are always (year of the September) + 50.

I'd better shut up or you'll be thinking that I'm as obsessive as my mate
the walking look-up table ;-) Oh, too late...

I wouldn't dare suggest such a thing! Especially from someone who has the
registrations table saved in a Word document!! ;-))

Have a Happy New Year, Martin.

And you!

PS: I have to confess that I have all the STD codes saved as a Word
document, mainly so that if someone gives me a phone number I can tell
roughly where it relates to...

"Martin Underwood" wrote in message
...

The code that they've used is quite cunning:
for vehicles registered between March and September, the two digits are
always the last two digits of the year; for vehicles registered between
September and March, the two digits are always (year of the September) +
50.

What I still don't understand is what is going to happen in March 2011, if
they continue with the present logic, which is to use '0' to indicate March
registrations and '5' to indicate September and the other digit to represent
the last digit of the year! There will still be plenty of vehicles on the
road registered in March 2001 as aa01 abc. Should be interesting!

Jack Taylor wrote:
"Martin Underwood" wrote in message
...

The code that they've used is quite cunning:
for vehicles registered between March and September, the two
digits are always the last two digits of the year; for vehicles
registered between September and March, the two digits are always
(year of the September) + 50.

What I still don't understand is what is going to happen in March
2011, if they continue with the present logic, which is to use '0'
to indicate March registrations and '5' to indicate September and
the other digit to represent the last digit of the year!

The logic is to use the last two digits of the year for Mar-Aug
registrations, ditto plus 50 for Sep-Dec, and the same code for Jan &
Feb of the following year. So Mar-Aug 2011 will be 11 and Sep 2011 to
Feb 2012 will be 61. This formula will be valid until 28 Feb 2051, the
last two 6-month periods using the codes 50 and 00.
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

"Richard J." wrote in message
. ..

The logic is to use the last two digits of the year for Mar-Aug
registrations, ditto plus 50 for Sep-Dec, and the same code for Jan &
Feb of the following year. So Mar-Aug 2011 will be 11 and Sep 2011 to
Feb 2012 will be 61. This formula will be valid until 28 Feb 2051, the
last two 6-month periods using the codes 50 and 00.

Thanks Richard, Neil, Annabel and others for clearing that up (sorry for the
delay in responding, I've been away over the Christmas/New Year period). I'd
clearly been incorrectly informed about the third/fourth digit structure. As
it was explained to me at the time the third digit would *always* be 0 or 5,
dependant upon month of registration, and the fourth digit would always be
the last digit of the year - hence my confusion! Obviously I was
misinformed.

Jack Taylor ) gurgled happily, sounding much like they
were saying :

The logic is to use the last two digits of the year for Mar-Aug
registrations, ditto plus 50 for Sep-Dec, and the same code for Jan &
Feb of the following year. So Mar-Aug 2011 will be 11 and Sep 2011
to Feb 2012 will be 61. This formula will be valid until 28 Feb
2051, the last two 6-month periods using the codes 50 and 00.

Thanks Richard, Neil, Annabel and others for clearing that up (sorry
for the delay in responding, I've been away over the Christmas/New
Year period). I'd clearly been incorrectly informed about the
third/fourth digit structure. As it was explained to me at the time
the third digit would *always* be 0 or 5, dependant upon month of
registration, and the fourth digit would always be the last digit of
the year - hence my confusion! Obviously I was misinformed.

http://www.dvla.gov.uk/vehicles/regm...ent_system.htm

In article ,
(Adrian) wrote:

Jack Taylor ) gurgled happily, sounding much like they
were saying :

The logic is to use the last two digits of the year for Mar-Aug
registrations, ditto plus 50 for Sep-Dec, and the same code for Jan &
Feb of the following year. So Mar-Aug 2011 will be 11 and Sep 2011
to Feb 2012 will be 61. This formula will be valid until 28 Feb
2051, the last two 6-month periods using the codes 50 and 00.

Thanks Richard, Neil, Annabel and others for clearing that up (sorry
for the delay in responding, I've been away over the Christmas/New
Year period). I'd clearly been incorrectly informed about the
third/fourth digit structure. As it was explained to me at the time
the third digit would *always* be 0 or 5, dependant upon month of
registration, and the fourth digit would always be the last digit of
the year - hence my confusion! Obviously I was misinformed.

http://www.dvla.gov.uk/vehicles/regm...ent_system.htm

I see this in the FAQ: "The Isle of Man may choose to adopt the system
later and a series of marks has been reserved."

Anyone know what series has been reserved?

--
Colin Rosenstiel

"Jack Taylor" wrote in message
. ..

"Martin Underwood" wrote in message
...

The code that they've used is quite cunning:
for vehicles registered between March and September, the two digits are
always the last two digits of the year; for vehicles registered between
September and March, the two digits are always (year of the September) +
50.

What I still don't understand is what is going to happen in March 2011, if
they continue with the present logic, which is to use '0' to indicate
March
registrations and '5' to indicate September and the other digit to
represent
the last digit of the year! There will still be plenty of vehicles on the
road registered in March 2001 as aa01 abc. Should be interesting!

Conside the following examples:

Mar 2004 04
Sep 2004 54
Mar 2009 09
Sep 2009 59
Mar 2010 10
Sep 2010 60
Mar 2020 20
Sep 2020 70
Mar 2049 49
Sep 2049 99

So for vehicles registered in Mar-Sep, the digits will be the last two of
the year; for vehicles registered in Sep-Mar, the digits will be the last
two of the year in which the September occurred + 50. This will last until
2050, when a new system will be required.

On Sat, 1 Jan 2005 09:49:11 -0000, "Martin Underwood"
wrote:

"Jack Taylor" wrote in message
...

"Martin Underwood" wrote in message
...

The code that they've used is quite cunning:
for vehicles registered between March and September, the two digits are
always the last two digits of the year; for vehicles registered between
September and March, the two digits are always (year of the September) +
50.

What I still don't understand is what is going to happen in March 2011, if
they continue with the present logic, which is to use '0' to indicate
March
registrations and '5' to indicate September and the other digit to
represent
the last digit of the year! There will still be plenty of vehicles on the
road registered in March 2001 as aa01 abc. Should be interesting!

Conside the following examples:

Mar 2004 04
Sep 2004 54
Mar 2009 09
Sep 2009 59
Mar 2010 10
Sep 2010 60
Mar 2020 20
Sep 2020 70
Mar 2049 49
Sep 2049 99

So for vehicles registered in Mar-Sep, the digits will be the last two of
the year; for vehicles registered in Sep-Mar, the digits will be the last
two of the year in which the September occurred + 50. This will last until
2050, when a new system will be required.



As I understand it, the idea is to use the format XXX 01 PP from March
2051, and XXX 51 PP from September 2051 where XXX are random letters
and PP is a place designator, so the present system could actually
last until 2100

Martin

"Martin Rich" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 1 Jan 2005 09:49:11 -0000, "Martin Underwood"
wrote:


So for vehicles registered in Mar-Sep, the digits will be the last two of
the year; for vehicles registered in Sep-Mar, the digits will be the last
two of the year in which the September occurred + 50. This will last until
2050, when a new system will be required.

As I understand it, the idea is to use the format XXX 01 PP from March
2051, and XXX 51 PP from September 2051 where XXX are random letters
and PP is a place designator, so the present system could actually
last until 2100

Seems logical that they simply reverse the current format, as they did in
the mid-80s when ABC 123 Y was followed by A 123 ABC.

2100 - I don't think any of us will be around to see what they decide to do
when that format runs out!


By the way, why was the letter U not used as a year letter? I can understand
why I, O, Q and Z were omitted because they are too similar to digits 1, 0
[O and Q] and 2. But what digit could U be confused with?