Six types of registration plates

The six types are:

* general vehicles with two plates (cars, trucks etc)
* Vehicles etc with one plate (motorcycles, trailers, tractors, caravans etc)
* Dealer plates are the yellow background ones.
* Diplomatic plates for embasy vehicles
* Personalised plates of various sizes and styles
* overseas visitors plates.

General purpose plates (cars, trucks, vans etc)

The old rego plates with two letters and up to 4 numbers which had a black background started to be available from July 1st, 1964 and the combinations were used up by about March 2001.

Some combinations of letters and numbers were not used as they could have been offensive to some people. The letter V was not used after FV because it looked too much like U. Also I and O were not used because they looked like one and zero. The European way of doing 0 with a slash through it was used when personalised plates became available in 1988.

MN1 to MN9999 has been used in the Cook Islands since 1984.

The current plates with the black letters / numbers and rerflective background started with AAA104 because the ones before it were sold as personalised plates.For more info on the history of New Zealand Licence Plates check out the page on the LTSA website. For more info on Personalased Plates check out www.plates.co.nz or 0800 752 837. For a cheaper alternative to a personalised plate or to enhance one then check out the frames on this website.