License plates

[Monatsende]

Germany...

For standard plates: First letters stand for the city/region going from A to ZW. Following letters and numbers are just to identify each car correctly. Though you can play with the letters if you are living in the right city/region. Like LA for Landshut can have LA-DY 111 or S-EX 69 (for Stuttgart) and so on.

Before EU:

Current format:

If you are the Federal President of Germany it`s this one.

Chancellor has "2".

Saisonal plates, mostly used for convertibles and motorbikes (03-10 = valid from March to October):

Historical vehicles - 30 years and older (with a "H" at the end):

There are more (for export, transfer, Corps Diplomatique, military e.g.).
Tax free vehicles have green letters.

 

[axletramp]

I live in Jersey, Channel Islands where the plates all start with the letter J followed by a number, currently from 1 to 6 digits.

There are a few older plates which start with the letters JSY followed by up to 3 digits, but these are rare and valuable and tend to get transferred from car to car.

All new plates tend to have the Jersey crest on them but you can opt for nothing or black white silver letters for older cars. Most garages let you put messages underneath the letters which is OK until you come to sell them. For instance, I once bought a Punto S for Mrs AT and she had 'Emma loves Steve' on the plates. We have since sold the car but we still see it knocking around with the same plates.

Basically when you get a car you get to chose from a big list of available numbers or, for a small donation, you can transfer plates from car to car. I've only bothered to do that once when I saw the chance of getting J8007 (James Bond 007? No?) so took it. There is an Aston DBS knocking around with J80007, but to date he hasn't offered me any money for mine.

 

[Famine]

Fiesta XR2i. Nice

 

[axletramp]

Ha, good spot. Probably one of the fleet of hire cars from the 80s/90s where Ford used the Channel Islands to 'exaggerate' their UK sales figures by supplying the likes of Hertz and Avis with cars at cost so that they could increase their sales quotas for the following year.

Luckily most have disintegrated in the salt air, been crushed and then packed off back to the UK.

 

[Jimlaad43]

And in guernsey, they just put a number.

 

[dxm8975]

In Japan our own private cars have the license plates principally consisting of four figures of numbers indicating the type of the car and the status of the loan the car has ever undergone.

The basic tone of the plates is usually white with green or black letters on them, sometimes you can see the green-colored number plates with white characters on them for those only in use for business mainly for the purpose of conveyance of products or transference of people...

In contrast, for those with smaller cylinder capacity are to be provided with the yellow plates with black texts and the combination of tones is inverted for those only in engagement for business tasks.

And the numbers - in the first place from the top, one of the digits 0~9 can be fit in accordance with the gauge of the vehicles and the status of the car going on loan to another person(known to be a "rented-car"), with a single cursive syllabary on the left which also represents the class of the car and the possession by the owner.
(In Japan, maybe unlike some of other countries the four figured letters are divided with a single hyphen by all means to facilitate the owner to memorize the pattern of the numerals).

 

[t3hgt3ftw1n]

Here in Puerto Rico, the standard license plates (until around 2009-2010) were like this:

Now the standard models are like this:

...And this:

In 2002, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the license plates were redesigned:

In 2010, to celebrate the Central American and Caribbean Games, the license plate were once again redesigned:

Now the government's making special license plates for European cars:

 

[terminator363]

Germany...

Saisonal plates, mostly used for convertibles and motorbikes (03-10 = valid from March to October):

Does this mean you can't drive a motorcycle in the winter?

 

[kikie]

Forbidden list of letter combinations.


AAP AAS AEL ALA ANE ASS BEB BIT BOM BOY
BSP BUB BWP BYT CAP CDF CDH CDV CON CSP
CUB CUL CUT CVP DCD DIK DOM FDF FOK FOL
FOU FUC FUK GAT GAY GEK GOD HIV HOL JEK
KAK KKQ KUL KUT LAF LDD LSP LUL MAS MCC
MDP MOR MOU MST NIC NIK NIQ NVA PDB PDO
PET PFF PIK PIN PIP PIS PJU PKK POT PRL
PSB PSC PSL PTB PUE PUT PVV PYK PYN PYP
PYS ROM RPW RWF SEX SOA SOT SPA SUL TAK
TET TIT TUE VCD VIH VLD VMO ZAC ZAK ZOT



Belgian motocycle plates use to be yellow with black letter/numbers and always started with the letter M.


Since the introduction of the European license plates, the motorcycle plates are also white with dark red letter/number combinations.