Vehicle registration plates of Portugal
The Portuguese Car number plate system for automobiles and motorcycles is simple and sequential. The system has no link to geographical locations or similar. It is an incremental numbering system consisting of three groups of two characters, separated by dashes. This system started in 1937 with AA-10-00, then went on to 00-00-AA and recently changed over to 00-AA-00. When this last sequence comes to an end, the plan is to replace it with the sequence AA-00-AA.
The Portuguese System is similar to the Netherlands former license plate systems, and follows the same lines as former AA-00-00 and 00-00-AA, current 00-AA-00, and (presumably) future AA-00-AA, AA-AA-00 and 00-AA-AA.
More photos of plates and corroborating references can be found on this external link.
Initially there were white characters on a black background, all of plastic. In 1992, the design was changed to one of black characters on a white background in metal or fibreglass; in that same year, the European blue ribbon was added with the Portuguese 'P' denominator. In 1998, a yellow ribbon on the right side was added with the month and year in which the car was first registered (e.g. 99/12 for December 1999 - the year comes on top of the month). This is different from systems such as in Germany (where the numbers indicate the start and end month of the vehicle's registration) and more similar to systems such as in Italy (where the date indicates the year of vehicle registration). Note that the date is that of first-ever registration of the vehicle, not the date the vehicle was registered in Portugal. Some vehicles carry plates that have a year and month seemingly out of tune with the alphanumeric sequence, and the reason for this is that these are imported used vehicles.
Trailers and vehicles for export have the following district code letters in their licence plates:
Until the 1970s only the codes A, AN, C, H, L, M and P were used. After that, other registration offices were created with new codes.
The following special codes are also used for trailers:
Local licence plates were issued from 1901 onwards by the District Governor’s Office, and usually consisted of the full name or the abbreviation for the district followed by a serial number. (e.g. "LISBOA 123" or "L.XA 123" for a vehicle registered in Lisbon).
A national car registration system was established in 1911. The country was divided into zones (North, Centre, South, and, from 1918, the Azores and Madeira), each having an identification number sequence for the licence plates, which was N-000, C-000, S-000, A-000 and M-000 respectively. Hire cars had a letter A added after the registration (e.g. S-4226-A) and provisionally registered vehicles had WW added (e.g. S-1703-WW). The plates were white letters on a black background.
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