Why the 61 registration plate makes no sense at all

THE centenary-edition Ford Fiesta, the revamped Renault Twingo, the more generously equipped SEAT Leon and a Nissan Micra with a supercharger. What do all these new cars have in common?

Nope, you're wrong. They're all being launched just in time to tie in with the launch of the 61-registration plate.

Back in ye olden days of say, 10 or 15 years ago, new registration plates used to be a big deal. I distinctly recall reading through special supplements made by papers like The Champion listing all the shiny cars you could buy on, say, an ‘R' registration plate. Now of course the supplements are long gone because - let's face it - nobody cares.

Why would you, when the current registration plates make no sense at all?

You'd be forgiven for thinking you'd need a maths degree to understand it. The new prefix, for instance, is 61, which marks out that your new motor's been registered in the second half of 2011, although it's too complicated to explain why. The two letters that precede it, I know because I don't get out more, signify where in the country you bought it - but not in any way Joe Public is going to understand - and the three at the end you make up yourself. Still following?

It's completely and utterly unsurprising that precisely nobody gets worked up about having the latest registration plates anymore, because nobody I know actually understands them. Numberplates, I've reckoned for years, need as much as a revamp as some of the cars they'll be destined to appear on.

Why not, for instance, replace the completely meaningless local lettering with, say, postcodes? People understand postcodes and have better chance of being able to tell the police, for instance, that an L39-registered car is from the Ormskirk area. It'd also have the added benefit of giving visiting motorists a clue as to what town they're in (unless, like me, you run on Pub Satnav).

And scrap the six-month thing, for Pete's sake. If you lose the smug factor after six months, why bother? Change it to say, just ‘12' for next year's new models, and stick with it for the whole 12 months. Buying a new car will regain its cachet in an instant.

Finally, the last scramble of numbers should just be something dull and chronological; for instance, if you were the 1,001st person to buy a car in the PR8 area, then yours should be 1001. It's boring but at least people will remember it, which is what you'd want if your 12-registered C-Class gets stolen in a resumption of last week's riots. It's also at least slightly more sensible than the surreal system currently used for new cars.

Unless anyone's got any better ideas...