Volvo 480 Club Europe

Isn't it called flame-red? Late '95-early '96 480 seen today in Wieringerwerf - Netherlands. The first in a couple of years.

Yes, it is Flame red. Was it a UK reg ?

Wieringerwerf is home of a Volvo 480 mechanic. This could be one of his customers, his workshop is next to the Avia petrol station (next to the A7 exit). He has a Flame Red 480 for parts and drives a Dark Grey himself (and a DAF 66).

Do the NL registrations indicate the age of the car ?

They usually do, but it is not the rule. They are issued in order of the date when the car was registered for the first time in the Netherlands, so if you import a second hand car, it gets a "new" plate. To make things more difficult for the license plate anoraks, there are special series for pre-1978 and pre-1973 cars which were left over from earlier registrations. The license plate stays on the car, even when it changed hands.
My 480 has a license plate which is correct for 1994 because its ownership has never left the country, but my V70 is imported from Sweden and has a license plate from a series issued in 2017, while the car is from 2010. However, there is a web service that provides all those details: https://ovi.rdw.nl/
See also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle ... etherlands

brinkie wrote: ↑

Sat May 26, 2018 1:19 pm

Wieringerwerf is home of a Volvo 480 mechanic. This could be one of his customers, his workshop is next to the Avia petrol station (next to the A7 exit). He has a Flame Red 480 for parts and drives a Dark Grey himself (and a DAF 66).

The Dutch registered car with an elder driver -by coincidence the number started with NL- went a direction different from mine which could have been the Motorway A7 towards Amsterdam or the Wieringermeer Polder, or West Friesland.

The army and military police use similar license plates with an identical scheme that are however not registered in the public license plate database as mentioned by Brinkie.
Also members of the Royal Family seem to use counterfeit plates.

During a certain period, reissued license plates could have a superscript 1, 2 or even higher above the first connecting "-". This could mean the license has been reissued because of loss of papers, but it could also mean the license had been revoked earlier because of collision damage and been reissued after repair.

About the letter and number combination on the license plate: the Dutch authorities do everything possible to avoid number/letter combinations that would express anything. When by incident, license plates carrying the abbreviation of a political party had been issued, owners were given the unique opportunity to have the license plates changed (even free of charge -talk about being Dutch!). In general, it is impossible to get your issued license plate changed. Unless of course, you are a royal, after all, it's a feudal country. No cherished number plates in Holland, oh no!

By the way, in Switzerland license plate information including the holder is public and can even be looked up on the internet.

Not just the royals, the Corps Diplomatique also has their own license plates with "CD", "BN" or "GN" in them, but only when the other characters are numbers (my 480 has "BN" in its plate but I am not a diplomat ). Also, the issuing authority (RDW) has a peculiar habit to reserve certain combinations for certain vehicle categories. Motorcycles, mopeds, HGV's and light commercial vehicles all have their own series.