Suffix Number Plates

By 1963, car registrations were starting to run out, and this paved the way for the introduction of Suffix plates. This new format ran until 1983, featuring a letter at the end to denote the year of issue.

The format for the Suffix number plate was as follows.

• Three letter sequence indicating the area of origin.
• Space
• One to three letter from 1 to 999
• Single letter (indicating year of issue, this started with A in 1963) - this changed on January 1st each year.

The scheme wasn’t made compulsory in the UK until 1965, as not all local authorities adoped this new format. The ability for consumers to know the age of any vehicle using this format caused a number of issues for retailers, as sales became hugely skewed as people preferred to wait for the new letter to be issued.

As a result of this, the industry fought to move the month in which the letter change occurred to August, this was eventually adopted in 1987 and ran until 1999.

Plate Finder offers a wide range of suffix type number plates available for you to choose from.