Short plates

[ferrariwtflambo]

Hello, I was looking as a guest on this vehicles off-topic, and I thought that It's a good place to ask one question which was bugging me for some time. I reminded myself of it today, when I saw some off-road car with german plates. It had

4 letters. I've seen until today usually 7 letters and digits plates in Germany. Are those individual plates, or is there an option in Germany to have 3,4 letters/digits?

Edited October 13, 2016 by ferrariwtflambo

[Svip]

German plates come in various different formats. The first part of the plate is for the district that issued the plate. And while the format on the right has to contain letters followed by numbers, each district can set the exact format of that. Some districts only require one letter followed by four numbers. Others do two letters, followed by fewer or more numbers.

 

Generally speaking, the arrangement of that secondary format (or subformat, if you will) is the district's decision, because it evaluates how many cars are likely to be registered in its district and adjust the format accordingly.

 

However, it should be noted that one can get customised plates in Germany, but only for the subformat, and only if that customisation follows the format (i.e. letters followed by numbers). It is there for common to see four numbers on plates, that is clearly supposed to be a year. I have seen too many German plates ending with 19XX to think it's a coincidence.

 

If you really want to geek out on German number plates, Wikipedia has an excellent article on the matter.