(25 Sep 2013, 4:09 pm)Daniel wrote That was pretty common for vehicles registered before 2001, though. With the new system, it's a lot harder to achieve and hence, we enthusiasts can't really predict what the registrations will be - any patterns are completely coincidental based on when they were registered.
That's not entirely true either. The patterns nowadays aren't completely coincidental. Prior to 2001, the first and last three characters were usually constant in a batch, as was the first of the numbers in series where three numbers were used. Apart from numbers that were omitted or unavailable, the second & third numbers usually formed a predictable sequence.
With the new system, the first five characters are almost always constant within a batch (cf. the five constant characters above). The final two characters are entirely unpredictable - they usually increase with fleet number though not in a complete series - as I said earlier, in most cases they are applied in order based on what's available - e.g. the 52 plate MPDs are in order, but missing AWI, AWQ (I & Q being unused in the system) and AWK, AWL, AWS, AWT (presumably these were unavailable).
So - the patterns aren't completely coincidental, but they also aren't predictable. This latest batch is no different to any other, in that the first part will be constant and the latter characters will vary according to what's available. It's nonsense to suggest that half will be BCx and half will be BDx just because this happened to be the split in a previous batch - that's the bit that's completely down to chance. They'll use BCx until they run out then BDx then BEx as necessary etc.