As the New 16 Plate Launches, We Look Back at the History of the Number Plate
Earlier this month, we wrote about our predictions for what we think will be the top short term lease vehicles for 2016.
Today as we write, we’re getting ready to add a whole new batch of vehicles to help fulfil those predictions, many of which will be arriving with a brand new 16 registration plate that hit the roads on Tuesday 1 March. This got us thinking in the office – where did the number plate come from and why do we use them?
After doing some digging, here’s what we found:
When was the number plate introduced?
Car number plates became compulsory in 1904. It seems strange to think that vehicle before then had no number plates, doesn’t it?
The first ever car registration to be issued was ‘A1’ – the man who got it even apparently camped out over night to make sure he secured it! All early car registration plates were made up of two letters and four numbers.
Why was the number plate introduced?
Basically, because more accidents were happening. At the turn of the 20th century, the number of cars on the roads started to increase, and with it came a higher number of incidents. This meant that something was needed to trace and identify the vehicles involved, and the idea of the number plate was born.
Have number plates always looked the way they do now?
Over the years, number plates have taken various different formats, and have had to change as new registration marks were required.
Back in the 1900s, number plates comprised of one letter followed by up to four numbers (C 1234), but by the mid-1930s three letters and three numbers were introduced (COD 123) after all options were taken.
Plates changed style again around 1963 when the suffix style plate was brought in, with an extra letter at the end to show the age of the car (COD 235Y). But by 1983, the same problem came up and the prefix style plate was introduced, with a letter at the beginning (A678 COD).
The most recent style change happened in 2001, when the new format of two letters followed by two numbers and another three letters came into play (CD16 COD). And if you didn’t know, the two letters at the start tell you the location of the car’s registration, for example NE stands for the North East – with the two numbers revealing the year of registration and the last three letters being totally random.
