| Old Slovakia Plates |
| ..or Czechoslovakia and Slovakia plates. They started in the 1960s in communist Czechoslovakia and were discontinued on 31. March 1997 when new plates were introduced to Slovakia. By law, these old plates have to be replaced by new plates by 31. December 2004. For motorcycles, the deadline was 31.December 1998. Colours: black on white, European format. Photo of normal plate BBI 11-75 in the new style The coding: Two district codes + one serial letter and 4 numbers. Numbers go from 00-01 to 99-99. The first combination for Banska Bystrica was BB-00-01, up to BB-99-99. Then, the third letter BBA-00-01 is given. Not a bad system. Most of the districts were small, some were larger. In Slovakia, the largest one was Bratislava BA, followed by Kosice KE and Trnava TT. BA is the only district in Slovakia using 2 codes for passenger cars. BA to BAZ wasn't enough, they started with BLA. Note, that there was no BL 00-01, but they started from BLA 00-01. It went up to BLL before April 1997. Kosice ended in KEM series, Trnava with TTK. How far got the other districts? For commercial vehicles, yellow background was used. This was not, however, taken so seriously in the most recent years of using. Coding was the same, 2L(+1)+4N.They were used along the white ones, using the same letters, also started from KN-00-01. When you know the number, you can't usually tell the colour. There are some exceptions: Yellow plates have mostly the first two letters as the serial letter: A to B, or up to C in Bratislava. Banska Bystrica and Bratislava-district were the only districts in Slovakia which used different codes for commercial than for passenger cars. In Banska Bystrica, BB was used for passengers and some old commercials. BC was used only for commercial. The highest yellow number recorded is BCA 28-16. In Bratislava-district, BH was used for passengers and BY for commercial (yellow) plates. Careful: BY is now used on new plates for Bytca, Bratislava-district does not exist since April 1997. There were originally two hyphens (sometimes more like dots) then the first one was dropped, only the numbers were separated by a hyphen: PPD 22-54. Then another style, (new) was introduced. The only change was the font. Trailers used the same system, only the district code took place in the centre. The plate looks like: 12-ZH-34. When the numbers are not enough, a serial letter is added to the district code, as with the previous types. 10-PDA-91. Also, trailers can have yellow commercial background while using the same trailer code system. Later, the first hyphen was dropped, 17 ZVA-47, then also an old and a new style appeared. Foreigners also had special plates. Coding was identical to passenger cars, only the colours were yellow on dark blue. Series started at xxA-00-01, taking unused numbers from the passenger and commercial plates. Most of them have two hyphens, some went as far as the old style of one hyphen plates, but they are not issues in the new style (contrary to the Czech Rep.) Photo of a comercial plate BCA/24-83 (yellow square plate) in the old style Photo of a passenger plate BB-25-04 in two hyphens style Photo of a foreigner plate ZHA-01-06 in two hyphen style New Slovak Licence Plates Last updated 22.12.2003 (dmy) |
