ON Thursday, March 1, the Y-registration plate will appear on new cars signalling the final time when a single letter will identify the age of a car - a practice which began on January 1, 1963 with A-registered vehicles. In 1967 the date of the letter change moved to August 1 and from March 1, 1999 the traditional annual change of identifier became twice-yearly on March 1 and September 1.

From September 1 this year a new number plate system is being introduced using a two-letter regional identifier, a two-number age identifier and three randomly selected letters.