Identification

Sixty years of British registration formats, the year each letter means, which letters were never used and why, what a dateless mark tells you (nothing), and the one rule DVLA enforces on every transfer: a plate can never make a car look younger than it is.

Ford's online build-data lookup has gone, and there is no Ford equivalent of a heritage certificate. What the car's own plate and chassis number can tell you, what DVLA holds, and the routes that still work for establishing what a Cortina, Escort or Capri originally was.