Why are registrations tied to the vehicle with year and county so prominent?

Dealers won't display the age if it didn't suit, as it stands they don't need to. As for other countries I'm sure that our regs are far easier to remember than theirs.

It used to be

My 1st car was 3254ZV

My 2nd car 527YZO

I'm not that old 😁

But I think the current system is quite good. So what if some people want to show off, most don't. It's quite good for the consumer too as car dealers would never be considered the most honest bunch of people.

I think the UK system is much better.

Two letters for area of registration

Two numbers for the year

3 random letters

Similar to us but they are able to purchase private plates and actually spell out words on their plate and hide what year the car is. So you could have a car with your name on it or have a five year old car look like its brand new

And when you purchase a plate you can transfer it to each car you buy or sell it for profit

So you don’t want to allow other people to have their own sequence of numbers and letters on their own car? Strange

Just because it doesn’t appeal to you doesn’t mean others should have to stick with it too.

You can't put a newer reg on a car in the UK. So you have to put an old reg on a new car, so your new car has an older registration number than it should and IMO the spacing to make it look like a word it is tacky and illegal.

Personally I think our system is great. It has people concentrating on the least relevant piece of the vehicle so makes 2nd hand vehicles cheaper, especially if you ignore the County part of the plate, and buy a vehicle not some numbers and letters.

Having the year on plates just encourages buying more new cars, and older cars are scorned because of the plate. Not very sustainable at all.

In other countries its common to see 10-20 year old cars on the road, they are well maintained and most garages will keep them going for years and years, same cars here would be scrapped long before that point. Insurance is the biggest factor here, but the 2nd is the reg and the prominent display of year. If its old it is "less" is the mantra

Personalised plates and transfer of cherished numbers is another great revenue stream for Gov in UK. Personalised plates used to be rare and predominantly for the affluent.

Nowadays many folk have personalised plates identifying their names or car type. Some have cherished numbers such as 1234 or 4444 etc. OIL XXXX is on pretty much every oil lorry here.

As a nordie I like the Irish system. Not sure how you could add personalised plates and cherished numbers into the mix, but I'd be for it as another revenue stream, but I'd guess the gov in south would rip the ar$e out of it with the pricing.

I like the Irish system,

Year makes it easier to identify a car to a Garda, Blue Audi 171 plate as opposed to Blue Audi with 9d9 or some random 3 digits.

The county gives you an indication of the type of roads the car has driven DL plate run a mile, KE, CW, LS plate probably means it spent many hours on a motorway etc...

The county goes back to the days of the local council were responsible to collect the Road tax of cars with there county on it or maybe just registration cant remember correctly.