Roland Dudley writes:
> Roger responds:
> >The first characters on 30's British plates were specific to the issuing
> >office, usually a some kind of town or district. My PA was originaly
> >registered in Belfast, on Oct. 7, 1934, as CZ6385. The CZ being the code
> >for Belfast. MG was the issuing code for University Motors, the biggest
> >dealer of MG Motor Cars. Therefore, the car you saw was originally sold
> >by University Motors.
>
> I assume from this that cars registered in the UK retain their plate
> I.D. for life. If that's not the case, then it's possible that the
> car in question may have contemporary plates.
Yes, this is correct. The registration plate on British vehicles stay
with that vehicle forever. I've even seen the plate still on the car
at the junkyard...
Roger is also correct. The *last two* alphabetic characters in a British
registration plate number identify the *town* the vehicle was registered
in. If there are only two letters, like in Roger's example, this is OK.
In a three letter registration, which is more typical in modern times,
i.e. "RFA 236 K", then the "FA" identifies the town of registration
(Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire in this case). The last letter in my example
identifies the *year* of registration, as of August 1st, the *previous* year.
"K" maps to 1st August, 1971 to 31st July, 1972. The vehicle is essentially
a "1972" in my example.
As of about 1983, the format of British reg plates looks like "A 236 BRC".
("RC" maps to Derby in this example).
Garry Archer Esq. {yale, uunet}!hsi!archer -OR- archer@hsi.com
Code 3/HSI Systems (a 3M company), Wallingford, Connecticut, U.S.A.
"An Englishman never enjoys himself, except for a noble purpose." - A.P.Herbert
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