Opel Rekord
1962 Opel Rekord P2 1700 S Coupé
Imported in December 2014
Aarhus, Denmark, May 2016 at the classic car park of the 2016 CRAA car show.
Age of plates: December 2014
The prefix "X" was historically associated with vice-capital Aarhus. Until 1958, only one letter was used, and when a second letter was introduced in 1958, the greater Aarhus-area was assigned the area code XA, and when that combination ran out, XB, before finally switching to XH. In 1966, Denmark started to phase out regional codes - the number of cars on Danish roads was rapidly increasing and the bigger cities were going through number series much faster than the smaller districts, leading to a shortage of available numbers. By removing the geographic codes, any available prefix could now be used in any area of Denmark, but of course, this also meant that you could no longer see where a car belonged simply by looking at the plates.
The end of regional codes happened gradually, as stocks ran out in each region. In Aarhus, this happened already at the end of 1966 (the XH-series was never completed)
Combinations used in the geographical-prefix system were blocked from future use until 2012, which is why you won't see any modern-type plates starting with XA, XB or XH, for example, despite of the letter X being used again, starting in 2004.
The Copenhagen-area had the (main) code starting with A, and when the old prefix-combinations were unlocked in 2012, it also coincided with the numbering system resetting to start all over from AA. So although you won't see the old Aarhus-combinations XA, XB and XH on modern plates for may years to come, the corresponding Copenhagen-prefixes have already been used way back in 2012-13.
The retro-plates on this old Opel were issued in 2014, to give it the appearance of an Aarhus-based car.
#CarsOf1962 #CRAA #ImportedToDenmark
