In A Row

Something I have been meaning to do for years.

When back in 2002 I bought the Jeep new, the dealer organised the registration at the local county offices and as we were in the process of moving house from one county to another, asked that all our vehicles were re-registered at the same time. The dealer asked if I wanted any "wish" registration number(s) and I replied no unless anything special came up. To my great surprise & joy, ended up with 5 consecutive numbers.

Back then, certain letters of the alphabet were either banned or restricted for German plates, one of them being "G". The law had been amended & a new standard introduced for the shape of numbers & letters. So the alphabet letter "O" in German plates is now egg-shaped to differentiate if from the number "O". MAkes tracking you down after being caught by a speed camera easier.

I took particular joy at the GO-10. Porsche had recently started using "GO" for its official works registered cars used in advertising & the version S-GO 10 was very often seen.

There is no "grey" market for licence plate number in Germany but once you have a number you have been able to keep it so long as you remained a resident of that county. Now the law has been further changed to even allow you to keep a number if you move.

In 2019 a wish number costs €10,20. Angie's Megane is due to be de-registered in the next few days and I can either reserve the number for a year or transfer it immediately to her new car. Nowadays I think all counties have an online service where you can search for available numbers and reserve them.

For those interested, German plates are organised as follows - there are exceptions for state-owned vehicles

First position: 1-3 letters of the alphabet denoting City/county the car's owner is registered in. E.g. Company cars have the company's place of registration

Second position: 1-2 letters of the alphabet

Third position: 1-4 numerals.

On the front & rear plates, there is a round sticker between pos. 1 & 2 which is of the coat of arms of the 16 German state you live in & the rear plate has another round sticker which is coloured by year and shows the month your MOT runs out. Police can spot at a distance if your MOT is no longer valid, simply from the colour.

German cars don't have tax or insurance notifications anywhere as it's not possible to register a car without a direct debit form & a statement from the insurance company who also have to notify the authorities whenever you cancel your policy. 

PS Our county is "Unterallgäu" so you might expect the first letters to be "UA". After a boundary reform in 1972, the county of Mindelheim & city of Memmingen were split & for some reason Mindelheim County renamed but it used the new county's admin centre town on the plates. Memmingen got the number "MM".