Vanity plates question

DereksDontRun said:
You can't just have any layout of letters and numbers, it needs to be of an existing format. AFAIK there are 3 styles:
1 - present/modern style: AB16 ABC (2 letters, then 2 numbers to signify the year, then 3 letters)
2 - prefix style: A1 ABC (1 letter, 1 to 3 numbers, then 3 letters)
3 - Northern Irish style: ABC 123 (3 letters then 3 numbers, but I'm not sure if those are just the plates available, or if that's the rule).

sure, there are other styles of plates out there, but they're ancient ones that can't be "bought new" - you'll have to buy it off someone else, and I doubt a quirky old style plate will be cheap.

Can look through examples and available plates here: http://dvlaregistrations.direct.gov.uk/

Note, not all letters are available, e.g. there's no I or Q.

And, afaik, the only other rule is (apart from nothing rude), you can't have a plate showing a year newer than your car. So, if your car is registered in 2014 then a 15, 65 and 16 plate is out.
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To add a little to that, the prefix letters for age identification you mention run back to 1983, previous to that (back to 1963) it was the other way around - suffix letters.

Also you can get Q - it denotes a kit car, import, something like that.
 
bazzabear said:
To add a little to that, the prefix letters for age identification you mention run back to 1983, previous to that (back to 1963) it was the other way around - suffix letters.

Also you can get Q - it denotes a kit car, import, something like that.
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pedantry is great ;) as a child of the 70s I remember the older style plate formatting well. I just tried to explain the formatting for the common styles of private plates available to buy from the dvla (and that website) today (as picking a new plate will presumably be far easier and cheaper than trying to buy an old style cherished plate 2nd hand). I also thought it easier to say I and Q aren't allowed, as they're not present either side of the plate. I thought "I" wasn't allowed as it's indistinguishable from "1" (so it being allowed in Irish plates is news to me), but no idea why Q isn't allowed, apart from the kit car prefix.
 
I also think prefix (and suffix for that matter) didn't allow for a Z but Z is available on NI and modern format plates but not in the geographic identifier bit.
 
We never got to Z in prefix that's all. We got to "Y" then moved on to 51 plate.

You can get Z in the last three chars of a prefix plate, and the last 3 chars of a current style plate.
 
I never used to think about a private plate, until I had a car with a plate that ended "pdo" - I didn't think anything about it until I phoned insurance and read out "pee, dee, oh" and realised it's pretty much reads as paedo... It also didn't help that the characters before the numbers were "sh" - like "shh, paedo". As I have a weekend job that often involves helping kids, I always felt a little anarchic/uncomfortable (depending my mood) parking outside work (despite knowing that practically nobody would notice the plate). So, yes, the numberplate lottery can be bad... Since then I've wondered about a private plate, to ensure a non-awkward plate in the future, but never pulled the trigger.
 
In 2030 I can buy a plate that works perfectly for my surname. The previous style works too, but it's already taken. Fortunately for me, every letter in my surname can convincingly be replaced by a number :)
 
Our registration system is ridiculous and it mostly spawns from the obsession we seem to have with age identifiers. Almost nobody else in the world bothers with it the level we do.
 
The_Dark_Side said:
See post#15
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yes, we all know Q means kit/questionable car - I was referring to the inability to have a Q on the right side of the numbers. I can understand avoiding "I" as it looks like a "1" (but then "O" and "0" seem to work ok). So, why can't we have "Q" on the right? eg AB16 QQQ? Is it just that the tail of the Q would be so thin it's not easily legible?
 
Housey said:
I saw 8 MX5 on an MX5 the other day, liked that. Now I need to find 1 MX5 :)
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The best one I ever saw (going back a number of years) was a classic delivery van in pristine condition, parked outside a local lingerie shop.

It belonged to the Gossard factory down the road going by it's signage, and had the plate BRA 1.
 
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