Scottish Elises

Right, this is starting to really get to me

It seems that every third or fourth 07 plate car that I see around these parts (Fife/Edinburgh) has the region identifier 'TN'.
Obviously this is not a Scottish identifier so it seems very strange to have so many around.

I can't find any info on where TN relates to though.

It's not like it's one particular type of vehicle (i.e you see a lot of VAG cars with OU or OV plates as their fleet cars are registered in Oxford) but it's loads of different types.

Anyone else noticed this or know why?

If you haven't and you live in the area keep your eyes peeled and prove to me that I'm not going mad!

(p.s. I do expect to get a few 'get a life' responses )

TN - Newcastle-upon-Tyne

http://www.kingkong.demon.co.uk/where/gb.htm

maybe it is I who should "get a life" I looked it up

In that link it says it's unused (which is the same as the ones I could find when I looked it up )

Maybe some of the 'T's' have started being used as an identifier for Scotland?

I swear I saw four more on my 25 mile journey home from work last night!

Further down the list, it lists them twice Newcastle isn't that far away, is there a dealer there ? The DVLA will move them about if a registering office runs out. so that is a posability. but TN is supposed to be Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Thats for the old style of reg I think (there's an explanation halfway down the page), i.e if the car was A123 ATN then it was registered in Newcastle.

The TN plates you are seeing are the new batch of reg numbers the DVLA issued to Edinburgh dealers from May onwards. Most of the dealer groups have them now - John Martin, Evans Halshaw ,Western etc. My last demo before I left my old job was TN07BBX and we had loads still left to issue.

Aha! Excellent! I thought it may have been that the DVLA had started issuing 'T' plates to Scotland as it was previously an unused character.

That explains it perfectly as the cars I've been seeing didn't really look like rental cars (Civic Type R, Clio 197, plenty of Golfs etc) although they could have been contract hire but there seems to be so many of them I didn't think that was likely.

Cheers mate, thats a mystery solved.