Car Registrations - Search Here for Yours!

Personalised car registrations are known by a number of synonyms - personal number plates, private number plates, cherished registrations etc - and although, strictly speaking, the car registration number and the actual plastic number plates themselves are two very different things, many of the terms are often used interchangeably.

Car registrations, which in the UK are issued by DVLA, provide a means of identifying each individual vehicle on the road; they also give an indication of the age of the vehicle upon which they are displayed. The rate at which the number of cars, motorcycles, vans, lorries etc on UK roads has increased has meant that the car registrations format has had to be changed several times. This has obviously affected private plates too.

Probably the earliest version most people will remember is the year suffix car registration which featured a 'year letter' at the end of the sequence. The registration ABC 123D would be an example of a suffix number plate.

After some years, demand necessitated the introduction of a new system and the arrangement described above was essentially reversed giving us the year prefix car registration. The year indicator letter now came at the beginning of the sequence, thus D123 ABC is an example of what became the standard order of numbers and letters at that time.

In September 2001 DVLA introduced the current car registrations system. This did away with prefix and suffix year letters altogether and replaced them with a two digit number code. Number plates issued in the current format display a group of two letters to indicate the area in which the vehicle was registered, then the two-digit age identifier mentioned above, and finally a group of three random letters which are unique to each vehicle and identify it specifically. KG51 FCV is an example of a current format car registration.

For more information please see our FAQ.

DVLA registrations information (this links to a Regtransfers.co.uk information page and does not go to the DVLA website.)

Car Registrations Homepage