Boring number plate question

[Mcbeth]

So my neighbour has a 99 car on a T plate...after that came V,W,X and Y until the '51' came in only 2 years later....I thought pre-51 the plates only changed once a year in September no?

[fjord]

Iirc, towards the introduction of '51' they rushed through the last couple of letters so they could start afresh and not miss any out.

[Mandat]

The V, W, X & Y plates changed at 6 months, to allow the 51 plate to coincide with September 2001.

[Mcbeth]

Ha! Thanks. Seems obvious now.

[AJB]

I think it's more that the started doing it every 6 months in March 99 (as in S came out August 98, and T came out in March 99) in order to avoid a huge rush of car registrations every August.

When they then ran out and got to Y, they swapped to the current scheme of 2 digits for the year, which happened to mean starting on 51 (there was no 00, 50 or 01).