please empty your brain below
I bought a new motorbike many years ago, in Essex. I took it home to Norwich. I Subsequently rode it to Bournemouth for a week's course in a hotel. Imagine my surprise to see in the car park a similar motorbike with the next registration number to mine, which belonged to someone from London on the same course.

Tim W. | 11.11.21 - 7:35 a.m. | #

I have never owned a car in the UK, but owned a couple in Canada. However, if I ever saw them again, I wouldn't be able to identify it as mine, as number plates stay with the driver, so both my cars had the same number plate. As I am no longer using the number plate, it is probably back in circulation with someone else, but as I am now in London, I doubt I'll ever see it in my rare and short trips back to Canada.

Greg | 11.11.21 - 7:38 a.m. | #

I had a bit of a numberplate obsession from a very early age. Cars form some of my earliest memories, riding unseatbelted and indeed unbackseated on a piece of carpet with at least half a dozen other preschool children (my mum's day on the collection rota) in the back of my dad's 1971 Moskvitch van.
I committed the numberplate to memory about the same time, all that is left of GNG 967K, I suspect.

Putters | 11.11.21 - 7:46 a.m. | #

(thank you for calling it car tax, not road tax)

martin | 11.11.21 - 7:49 a.m. | #

It's interesting to see how even the Golf would have trouble fitting into the garage, and the patch left by the newer vehicle shows how needlessly inflated car sizes have become in recent years (unless it's a van).

NickW | 11.11.21 - 8:02 a.m. | #

My parents once had consecutive number plates for their Mini and Maxi cars, bought at the same time from the same dealer - LMT 341P and LMT 342P.

I've run the registrations of cars that I've owned through the DVLA checker and interestingly (to me anyway) some of the more recent ones are no longer in the system, but several of the older ones still are.

Alan S | 11.11.21 - 8:30 a.m. | #

back in the early '70s we had two cars with the number plate just 6 digits apart. Not unusual, except one was an Austin and the other was an Audi. (not personalised plates either!

The worst plate I ever had was when I bought a new car. The salesman proudly offered a choice of number plate, all AxxxUGH. I suppose it was sort of appropriate as it was a Maestro!

100andthirty | 11.11.21 - 8:40 a.m. | #

Collecting my first car from the dealer I had bought it from, after its first annual service, I found it parked next to a car with the very next highest number (presumably also there for the same reason). Much bigger, but the same colour.

I used to regularly see a car with a numberplate numerically close to another of mine on "The Bill". Same make, model and again the same colour, except theirs was a hatchback and mine was the estate version.

Timbo | 11.11.21 - 8:44 a.m. | #

My parents' first new car was bought to celebrate a significant wedding anniversary, and the registration numbers on offer included a two digit number that matched the year of their marriage. Seven years later it got written off in an accident on the A-road with the same number. Nothing daunted, a different dealer was able to offer, and they chose, the same two-digit number for its replacement.

Timbo | 11.11.21 - 8:50 a.m. | #

I still remember the number of my dad's B suffix Morris Minor which he had about 50 years ago just after passing his test to upgrade to 4 wheels. DVLA say it was taxed until 1994. The next number in the sequence appeared on a Mini the same colour on the cover of Practical Classics magazine.

kev | 11.11.21 - 8:52 a.m. | #

I have a photo which shows the family car just before we left the the UK. 427 MMU we took the car to the Netherlands, after a time it got Dutch numbers plates.
427 MMU number boards stayed in the garage for a very long time, but in the mid eighties they were finally dumped.

Michael | 11.11.21 - 8:55 a.m. | #

Prompted by this, I searched for my old car, sold just a year ago ahead of the ULEZ. It was bought by a car dealer in Wales. Aside from the fact it was an uncompliant diesel, it was in decent nick, about 7 years old.

To my surprise, it's already got 'details could not be found' status. Wow.

Will | 11.11.21 - 9:14 a.m. | #

With most private cars being leased these days, I imagine in recent years there will be many large blocks of very similar cars with consecutive registrations, registered by the leasing company.

Mikey C | 11.11.21 - 9:34 a.m. | #

Way back in the early 90s I got my novice amateur radio callsign.

One of the older chaps in the club wanted a particular callsign that was the same (of very similar) to the plate on his first motorbike.

He tried to reserve it, but it had already been issued. It was issued to me the day before his reservation attempt.

David @DTL | Homepage | 11.11.21 - 9:37 a.m. | #

Interesting how car registration numbers can be so memorable, even though they are essentially a random collection of letters and numbers. I could quote all five that I've personally owned, but won't do so here because they form part of numerous online passwords - ideal for something that requires a memorable yet random collection of numbers/letters.

Frank F | 11.11.21 - 9:43 a.m. | #

On Saturday 30 November 1990, I drove my year-old Astra G545 VMF from Birmingham to Fulham and parked up in a very scruffy car park next to the same model and colour car G546 VMF. I remember being a very tiny bit irritated that we weren't parked in the right order (I was to the right of the other car). Mine was a company lease car and I suspect that the other car had been allocated to one of my 800 colleagues in one of several offices around the country. However, there was no work reason why we should be in the same vicinity.

Wendy Coggan | 11.11.21 - 9:44 a.m. | #

Tim W. Won't go into details but the same happened with me back in the mid 80's at a motorcycle event in Suffolk.
I would have enjoyed speaking to the owner/rider to see if he was the original purchaser.

Dave | 11.11.21 - 9:47 a.m. | #

I think you lost the option to choose your number when they changed the format. With my first brand new car (number format A000 AAA) I could choose the number from within the dealer's block, but with later ones (AA00 AAA) I had to put up with whatever the system had allotted me.

Jonathan Wadman | 11.11.21 - 10:01 a.m. | #

Sometimes the fun is from seeing an exotic vehicle's number-plate closely resembling the number-plate of some car you know, rather than having both the number-plate and model close.

For example, my car was handed down from an extended family member. He kept his number-plate and had a new one assigned to the car handed to me. Recently I found a truck (almost always with a semi-trailer) whose number-plate is exactly 200 from his, i.e. a one-digit difference. The letters are, of course, identical.

And all three vehicles -- my car, his new car, and tractor unit I see, are all white. I forgot whether the tractor unit was a MAN or a SCANIA though. If the former, then all three are German branded.

Patrickov | 11.11.21 - 10:42 a.m. | #

Wendy. Fortunately, with motorbikes, it's a lot easier to arrange them in the correct order.

RogerW | 11.11.21 - 10:52 a.m. | #

How cool was that! No wonder you were grinning.

My other half frequently exhorts me to look at the plate of that Audi, Honda, (or whatever), or exclaim with delight look, there's an Austin Martin, Ferrari, (or whatever) when we're driving.
After almost 30 years of marriage I'd have thought he'd have figured that he'd have a much better success rate if he just told me the colour instead!

Cornish Cockney | 11.11.21 - 11:21 a.m. | #

What an amazing find.

I can remember the registration number of my mother's moped in 1972 and her first car in 1975. I have owned my current car for twenty years and I still can't remember the digits in the right order.

Sarah | Homepage | 11.11.21 - 11:27 a.m. | #

I am always slightly surprised when people talk about buying a new car as if it was normal. I realise that somebody has to buy new cars, otherwise there wouldn't be any second-hand ones, but to me it seems an irrational thing to do.

Also surprised at the number of cars recorded as "untaxed". Perhaps these are cars which someone sold to a stranger in the pub, who then used it for a while and then abandoned it, without ever troubling Swansea with their address.

Malcy | 11.11.21 - 11:40 a.m. | #

Someone smashed into the back of my Renault 5 in the early 80s, twisting the chassis, and the garage declared it to be a right-off. I needed a vehicle for my work, so traded it in at that point against a new one, but then the insurance company told the garage it wasn't a right-off after all and to repair it. I stopped behind it at some traffic lights some 18 months later and wondered if the current owner had been told of its accident history! (Interestingly it's still on the DVLA database, but with no activity after 1991.)

Nails UK | 11.11.21 - 11:48 a.m. | #

Was thrilled when I saw my dad's old Granada (DCL 371T) four years after he'd sold it. Was even more amazed to see it again two days later, fifteen miles across town!

Matt | 11.11.21 - 12:54 p.m. | #

We live in Barking but part exchanged our first car for a new one with a dealer in Derby. We saw our first car some years late parked in a street near where we live in Barking. Only the once so the driver was likely just visiting.

JohnC | 11.11.21 - 3:33 p.m. | #

Curiousity got the better of me and I checked whether my old blue MGB from the early 1970s was still on the road. The registration number was short, memorable, but not suitable (I thought) for personalisation. I was obviously wrong - it's now turned into a white Jaguar!

Ian | 11.11.21 - 3:57 p.m. | #

Some dealers do still allow you choose the number plate. Back in 2005 I bought a Seat Ibiza and was offered the ending letters on the plate as FXR, FXS or FXT.

I chose FXR and what do I discover a couple of months later in a road near my parents? Another Ibiza with the same plate but ending in FXS. Must have been bought just after mine.

Neil | 11.11.21 - 8:36 p.m. | #











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