Many Canberrans who travel internationally, and particularly to the United States, report being astonished by the multiplicity of registration plate numbers and derivations - sometimes even a complete lack of plates - which exist elsewhere across the globe.
In the small part of the world that is the ACT, we are all generally more conformist than that.
Standard-issue ACT rego plates start with Y, and are all blue letters on a white background.
Yet there are a number of curiosities and anomalies which occur within the territory's registration system, not the least of which occurs on the Prime Minister's bulletproof BMW 7 Series, which carries the distinctive C1 plate (and is invariably tailed by one or more BMW X5 SUVs, with armed federal police Close Personal Protection officers on board).
The heavily armoured 3.6-tonne BMW should, through strict adherence to the time-honoured system, be registered as Z1.
Equally curious is that the Governor-General's official car does not carry a registration plate at all, and that ACT Policing has an exemption for vehicle registration under road transport laws, but chooses to display registration anyway because, according to a police spokesperson, "it is important to model good behaviour on our roads for the safety of everyone".
The ACT's Y series of plates began as part of a grand Commonwealth plan first developed in 1947.
At that time, the Australian Transport Advisory Council, comprising state and Commonwealth ministers, appointed three separate standing committees, including the Australia Road Traffic Code Committee, to draft recommendations for uniform traffic laws across the country.
Seven long years later, the committee came up with its progress report, which included a proposed system of plates in all states and territories having three letters, followed by three digits. This provided a possible 14.8 million combinations.
While this seemed a formidable number at the time, total vehicle registrations across the country topped 14.8 million in 2007, according to the ABS. As of January last year, there were 20.1 million vehicles registered across Australia.
The original letter ranges, based on the volume of cars in each jurisdiction at the time (with NSW as the most car-populous state by far), were allocated to the states and territories as follows:
- NSW: AAA to FZZ
- Victoria: GAA to MZZ
- Queensland: NAA to QZZ
- South Australia: RAA to WZZ
- Western Australia: UAA to WZZ
- Tasmania: WAA to WZZ
- ACT, NT and the Commonwealth: YAA to ZZZ
- Reserved: X
It was agreed at the time that buses and taxis would not be part of the allocation, which led to the T plates for the taxi industry. Z would become the Commonwealth car rego prefix.
However, what is less well known is that some Commonwealth departments received their own alphabetical allocations for their cars. For instance, vehicles attached to the former Department of the Interior had YI plates, the CSIRO YC, the Department of Civil Aviation YA, the Bureau of Mineral Resources YB, and the Postmaster-General's Department YP.
The Northern Territory, as has often been the case, decided to go its own way and rejected the Y plates allocated to it altogether, preferring all-numeric plates. Curiously, in 2009 the NT changed its system again, adopting a new alphanumeric format.
The first ACT Y plate was issued in August 1968, but within 30 years, the three-letter and three-number format was exhausted.
A poll conducted in the ACT (before the online Your Say forum was conceived of) found that most Canberrans wanted the Y prefix retained. Consequently the last number in the sequence was replaced with a letter (e.g. YAA 22A) to begin a new Y series.
This format, says Transport Canberra, should keep us going for another 40 years, given our current annual registration rate of around 40,000 vehicles a year.
The lowest point for ACT registrations since the creation of the latest database came during the global financial crisis, when regos tumbled from 28,237 in 2007-08 to just under 16,000 the following financial year.
Heritage ACT plates, which are single, double or triple numbers, are only available when the previous owner releases them back onto the market. They are usually auctioned.
Ben Hastings, the head of vehicle auctions at AllBids in Canberra, said the values of number plates at auction are rising quickly, with the cheapest of the four-digit ACT plates fetching a minimum of $4000, and three digits fetching $30,000-plus.
"Often the three-digit ACT plates we see have been in the same Canberra family for years," he said.
The rarest of all, ACT 1, was last spotted affixed to a Mercedes E-Class in 2015, according to the numberplates.com.au blog, and is in private hands.
The plate was reportedly sold some time prior to 2001 for $66,000. Given its hugely collectible nature, it would likely be worth more than 10 times that now.
Finally, if you see a plate beginning with FCT (Federal Capital Territory) on your local roads, be aware that this is a very rare and endangered species. FCT1 was only issued to the late Sir John Butters, the first chairman and later chief commissioner of the Federal Capital Commission.
