"Jack Taylor" wrote in message
. ..

"Martin Underwood" wrote in message
...

Maybe the boundaries have become a bit more
blurred and the regions have got larger (like a two-letter code in a car
registration number used to relate to a specific town, whereas now it
relates to a group of counties).

Actually, to be pedantic, they still do (to a degree). The first character
is the registration district, the second is the registration office. So,
for
example, in a registration such as AA54 ABC: AA indicates Anglia
district,
Peterborough office (as would AB to AN). AO to AU are Anglia district,
Norwich office and AV to AY are Anglia district, Ipswich office.

But once there would be far more offices, each with its own mark(s): now
they've merged the marks so you cannot tell so accurately where a car was
registered.

I know the situation in Yorkshire better than Anglia: at one time UA, UB, UM
were Leeds, YG was Bradford, CX was Huddersfield and HL was Wakefield. These
were merged so that all these letters signified "somewhere in West
Yorkshire". I think the size of the region covered was further increased
with the new-style AA05 BBB numberplates. I'm not sure why they even
bothered to use new letters: the A123 BCD format had a two-letter location
code (CD) so why not continue to use the same code in the new-style
numberplates? Methinks that they took the opportunity to rationalise (merge)
some of the issuing offices at the same time.

And of course so many cars have personalised numberplates these days that
you often cannot tell anything about a car's age or place of "birth".

I'd better shut up or you'll be thinking that I'm as obsessive as my mate
the walking look-up table ;-) Oh, too late...