Regn. prefixes

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Thu 21 Jun 2007 10:26
Regn. prefixes - Mazda-Man
Anyone know where the regn. prefixes EF & EA hail from?

Cheers!
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Thu 21 Jun 2007 10:30
Regn. prefixes - gmac
EA - Dudley
EF - Middlesborough
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Thu 21 Jun 2007 10:32
Regn. prefixes - gmac
They were the originals, now EA - EY Chelmsford
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Thu 21 Jun 2007 10:34
Regn. prefixes - L'escargot
Anyone know where the regn. prefixes EF & EA hail from?


E plus any other letter from A to Y is Chelmsford. All ex-Ford Motor Company vehicles, like mine, have one of these letter combinations.
--
L\'escargot.
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Thu 21 Jun 2007 10:44
Regn. prefixes - Mazda-Man
Cheers guys :)
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Thu 21 Jun 2007 11:08
Regn. prefixes - Brian Tryzers
Does anyone else here share my feeling that the new(ish) registration system is disappointingly soulless? The old suffix / prefix system had a continuity back to the dawn of motoring in this country; I grew up in the land of RX, BW, FC, WL and UD plates - Local Yokel will know where I mean - and I could tell we were nearly home when I was seeing more of these than anything else. (Then I'd see Didcot power station and be sure there wasn't far to go.)
By comparison, the new system is depressingly literal-minded, and then can't even manage that. It's supposed to be memorable and local, but my present plate begins with V for, erm, Vorcester - and that is 40 miles away. Nor do you get a number to play with, which used to be part of the fun.
In other words, the new system has thrown away the romance of a 100-year heritage without any compensating useful modernity, and I hate it. Silly thing to get worked up about, but there we are!
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Thu 21 Jun 2007 11:45
Regn. prefixes - ForumNeedsModerating
If you think that's boring - here in the Principality, the first letter 'C' (for Cymru) starts at 'CA' (Cardiff area I think) & works its way north up the alphabet , so that for example Llandudno/Caernarfon/Anglesey get CW,CX,CY (no CZ AFAIK - maybe would be confused with Czech republic.. hmmm.or maybe not(!))
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Thu 21 Jun 2007 15:25
Regn. prefixes - Group B
It's supposed to be memorable and local but my present plate begins with
V for erm Vorcester - and that is 40 miles away. Nor do you get a number
to play with which used to be part of the fun.



You can't trust cars to be locally supplied these days anyway. My Dad got his current car on lease purchase and the broker sourced the car from a dealership in Preston; but he lives in NE Derbyshire, 80 miles away.

Personally I dont think its a problem, they are all written in my AA road atlas but I've got no idea what the codes for my local areas are..

:-o
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Thu 21 Jun 2007 15:31
Regn. prefixes - local yokel
WillDe - indeed I do know all those suffixes. I grew up in Hampshire where AA was the norm - friends had HAA 7, and a school friend's ada had AA 77 IIRC.

RX and RD take me back in particular. SWMBO had A116 YRD when we were courting, and later I had D722 ARX.
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Thu 21 Jun 2007 16:55
Regn. prefixes - Mad Maxy
Know what you mean, WDB. It was for that reason that I bought a YPP xxx plate (that just happened to be local - Bucks) for a modest sum.

The new system is hell for bus spotters. For instance, London Transport (as was) used xLT registrations (nice) on many of its Routemasters. So RM 432 was WLT 432.
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Thu 21 Jun 2007 17:31
Regn. prefixes - Muggy
And the Isle of Wight lost the distinctive DL sequence, I think they use HW now?

Surely they could have kept DL in this instance even if it meant breaking a sequence elsewhere?

I also find it extremely difficult to remember the new registrations compared to the older ones, I'm not sure why. And the current system certainly isn't the one I would have chosen if I was in charge of it at the review a few years ago. My system would have been as follows:

ABC 1234 xx

Where ABC would be the traditional letter codes for each area.

1234 would be a month / year code, eg 0607 for a car registered this month.

xx represents AA through to ZZ for individual identifiers, giving a maximum of 17576 per area per month [ less any letters omitted, for example if they omit Q it would still give a maximum of 15,625 possible registrations per area per month ]. So let's take the IoW as an example, the first car registered in June 2007 on the IoW would be ADL 0607 AA, the next one would be ADL 0607 AB and so on; after ADL 0607 ZZ the next one would be BDL 0607 AA and so on.

To avoid too many similar registrations each sequence could "wrap round", thus if ADL 0607 GK was the last car sold in June, the first one in July would be ADL 0707 GL and so on.


The two drawbacks with this, which I guess is why they didn't do something like this, are a) they would have to change their computer software to cope with the extra digit and b) the DVLA would not be able to create and sell combinations that spell out words.

I suspect b) would have been the deciding factor!

Discuss???
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