How to tell the age of a car from its vehicle registration.
British number plates explained? :
There have been 3 major systems used to create number plates in the UK and from the number plate it is possible to find out the year that the car was registered and where it was registered. Please note that private number plates may not follow the normal rules and there fore the following calculator is for what I call normal registrations.
Current Registration Layout 2001 to current day.
The age of a car from a modern number plate is determined by the 'age identifier' as shown in the image above. How it works - The first digit '5' determines what part of the year the car was first registered. When dealing with Car Registrations the year is split into 2 parts. March to August (part 1 and is denoted by the digit '0') and September to February (part 2 and is donated by the digit '5') so the second part of the year actually crosses over to the next year but is still classed as being registered on the first year. In the image above the '5' denotes that the car was registered after September. If it had been a '0' then it would have been registered after March and the year is 2001.
Example 2 : BD02 MRS would mean that the year is 2002 (The second digit) and the car was registered between March and August (The first digit).
Example 3 : BD12 MRS would mean that the car was registered in the period 2002 between September 2002 and February 2003. This car may well have been registered in January 2003, however it still falls in the 2002 registration period.
All Change in 2011 - In 2011 the first digit of the 'age identifying number' increases by one. So '11' would be a car registered between March 2011 and August 2011 and '21' would be a car registered between September 2011 and February 2012.
Registration Plates 1983 - 2001 (A to Y)
Cars registered between 1983 and 2001 can be aged by the first letter of their number plate. There are exceptions to this as some of the letters are not used during this process. The following letters are excluded when aging a car and need to be accounted for when working out the year that the car was first registered in. These letters are ('I', 'O', 'Q - Normally denotes a kit car' & 'U').
Car Registrations Pre 1983
From 1963 to 1983 the identifying letter for the year the car was registered is at the end of the plate and the following table shows the letter corresponding to the year.
| Letter | Year | Letter | Year | Letter | Year |
| A | 1963 | H/J | 1970 | R/S | 1977 |
| B | 1964 | J/K | 1971 | S/T | 1978 |
| C | 1965 | K/L | 1972 | T/V | 1979 |
| D | 1966 | L/M | 1973 | V/W | 1980 |
| E/F | 1967 | N/M | 1974 | W/X | 1981 |
| F/G | 1968 | N/P | 1975 | X/Y | 1982 |
| G/H | 1969 | P/R | 1976 | Y/A | 1983 |
