Day to day, you may not give too much thought to the licence plate of the vehicle you drive for work. However, you can be sure that some people are paying attention. You can get a lot of information from a licence plate – and not just about the car it's attached to. Anyone who's ever been flashed by a speed-trap camera knows how easy it is to identify a driver from a quick glimpse of their plates, for instance.

As for the vehicle itself, a registration plate tends to offer 2 distinct pieces of information: where it was first sold and how old it is. With the current plate format, you can get those details from the first few digits.

Top RIFT Customer Cars

The most popular cars for RIFT customers in 2017 were:

  1. Ford Fiesta
  2. Ford Focus
  3. Vauxhall Astra
  4. Vauxhall Corsa
  5. Volkswagen Golf

Other popular manufacturers, included BMW and Audi, but Ford and Vauxhall continue to top the RIFT list.

Can you read a number plate?

According to surveys, only about 1 in 3 UK drivers knows how to read the information given on a DVLA licence plate. Newer drivers aged between 17 and 25 are least likely to understand the codes. On the 1st of March, the new set of registration plates came in for 2018. If you don't know how to read a plate, here's a quick run-down.

  • The first 2 letters are called the DVLA memory tag. The first one is the general region the vehicle was introduced (L for London, for instance) and the second refers to the local DVLA offices.
  • The next 2 digits are the “age identifier”. They basically just tell you when the plate was issued. Again, since plates can be swapped, this might not be 100% accurate. The vehicle shouldn't be any older than the age identifier says, though.
  • The remainder of the licence plate number is random, and doesn't really tell you anything.

The new plates that came in at the start of March will all have an “18” age identifier on them. That only lasts until the end of August, though. Under the current system, the age identifiers issued change in September, adding 5 to the first digit. So, for a car registered after the end of August 2018, the age identifier will be “68”.

Do you know the rules for swapping number plates?
Of course, those details might not actually tell you anything much about the vehicle itself. Strange as it sounds, it's legal to swap plates between cars – with a few restrictions. You can't, for instance, slap a plate on that's more recent than the vehicle itself. There's nothing inherently dodgy about swapping plates, if it's done within the rules. It's something worth keeping in mind when you're thinking of buying a new car, though. You won't necessarily be able to tell the exact age of it from the plates, but it shouldn't be older than its registration suggests.
You don't have to re-register a vehicle when you move home. This means the part of the plate that says where it was originally sold might not reflect where its owner lives or uses it.

Will my number plate knowledge help me grab a bargain?
Understanding how all of this works can be a big advantage when buying or selling a car. Once a new age identifier comes in, vehicles registered with older plates tend to drop sharply in cost. A car with a “17” or “67” plate will probably be a decent bargain now the “18” plates are in. Even though it's still a very new car, you could be looking at thousands off the list price!

If you think you may be due a travel tax rebate get in touch with RIFT.  We're known as the UK's leading tax rebate and tax return experts. We're also the only company in the industry to be awarded the ICS ServiceMark so you'll always be in safe hands with RIFT.