I believe some American license plates show the year of registration in one of the top corners of the plate. I've also notice that the square the year is written changes colour, is there a colour code for all the years so that cops can indentify the year of car by this this colour instead of reading the numbers (which are usually in black and are quite faint)? It be useful to know so that the exact year of a car can be identified. With British license plates you can look up details about the car on the DVLA website, but you don't seem to be able to do this with the DMV. Also I think there is a thing with made-up license plates in movies and TV series (in The Sopranos various cars have had the same license plate)

Here a couple of examples:



You can just about see a "3". Does that mean 2003?

I renamed your thread to "License Plates" (removing US) to include few links for other countries.

So there is the British license plates site, at http://www.vehiclelicence.gov.uk/EvlPortalApp/index.jsp -> "vehicle enquiry"

For French plates there is http://sfpi.asurtech.com/histo.php3
But as the car plate changes when it is sold in another department, it only gives the date of the last registration. It can be useful anyway.

I think New Jersy uses stickers on the windshield to show the registration. In California they usually put the year on the sticker (which goes on the rear plate). In some states the plates belong to the car so it gets transferred from owner to owner. This is true in California and depending on the style and number you can estimate the year (but usually they have a fake number for movies and TV). Most states issue the plates in sequential order so you would need to know when a certain pattern started and ended. In other states the plate belongs to the registered owner so they keep it if they sell the car. And in some states, they require you to update your plate every few years to keep everything legible. The DMV is a state authority rather than a federal authority so unless you know each state's rule you can't really figure out the date from the plates.

I thought the windshield stickers were tax discs (do they have that in America?). I get the impression that movie and televisions studio uses fake plates on the main vehicles they use (like Tony Soprano's Suburban) and sometimes in a film you'll see an old car with a newish license plate, but what you said about updating license plates explains that, though you still see vehicles in movies with tatty old plates that are barely legible.

The stickers are for valid registration and passing inspections. They get updated annually. Some states rely solely on the windsheild decals while others use plate stickers. I live in an area where there are no state emissions/inspections so I just pay the registration fee annually and they send me a sticker for me to put on my license plate.

This is actually not a 1999 Cadillac but a 1995-97 model.



Also this is not a 2000 Cadillac but a 1997-1999 one


Also notice how these cars all have the same regstration and some are even owned by different characters in the show.

OF369B






OP221K




OG550C

Which state do you live in, qwerty86?

Sometimes they get lazy and hope no one sees that they used the same plate. Since the sticker needs to be replaced every year, you'd have to remove the old one to put the new one on. Here in Nevada they use some strong adhesive for the license plate decals so most people (me included) just clean the old sticker and put the new sticker over it.

But the year on the sticker stays the same, right? And is there a different colour for each. Because the numbers are pretty hard to read, in Britain it's easy because we had a different letter prefix for each year, now we a new numbering system. And on the Maserati, the 3 does mean 2003, right?

I've also seen a lot of plates with squares to put the stickers in but no year sticker.

We use a month in a large digit in the middle of the sticker with the year vertically on one side. The color changes every year.

This is a pretty cool site with all the different state's plates from the last couple of decades:
http://www.plateshack.com/platelist.html

If you want info on cars with a license from the Netherlands, you can use this link: http://info.apk.nl/ovi/OviInvoer.aspx

It will provide some technical details about the car, aswell as the date it was first registered in The Netherlands.

If the search doesn't return a page with data, the car isn't registred anymore, so it eaither scrapped or exported.

Some people just stick the registration number anywhere (maybe to confuse the cops). The previous owner of my Tempo did that on the rear plate.

As far as I know as long as the sticker is visible and legible, it's legit. I've seen a few cars where people ran out of space on their old plate and started putting it on the other corners.

Ya I know, but it seems like a good idea if you have like 7 stickers all over your plate to trip up the police.

For Sweden just visit https://www21.vv.se/fordonsfraga/ and enter the license number in the box. You get brand and model (Fabrikat), year (Årsmodell) as well as a lot more info like number of owners (Antal ägare).

The decals on US plates generally refer to the current year and are generally tax related. In the past new plates were issued for each car every year with the appropriate date but over the past 20 years or so the plates were not reissued but a new current date decal is provided to indicate current registration and tax paid.

In general, US plates do not have any information (that is redily available to the public) that can be used to identify either the make, model or year of the car.

You can tell what generation a plate is from (example: "The Russian" Alaska license plate is used from 2001 to date, and the blue-on-yellow Alaskan plates were used from around 1985 to 2000, my Tempo has a yellow AK plate.

Uk Plates (Copied info from the site):
As usual, using "Vehicle Enquiry" from www.vehiclelicence.gov.uk/EvlPortalApp/index.jsp
It is also possible to guess an approximate year from first or last letter, but I do not know how.

These pages help with the identification of the years:
www.ukcar.com/features/reg_year.htm
www.dvla.gov.uk/vehicles/regmarks/reg_marks_memorytags.htm