Vehicle registration plates of Argentina

It is a body dependent on the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, whose mission is to regulate everything related to the registration of ownership of motor vehicles, subsequent procedures and pledge credits.

Its first objective was to unify, regulate and standardize the different identifications or automotive patents, a task carried out until then by each municipality in the country autonomously.

The letter identified the province or district where the automobile was located, while the numbers were generated consecutively, although zoned according to the corresponding registry.

These first patents used a somewhat small typeface that made it difficult to read them at a certain distance, especially when faced with police requirements.

This change was observed more quickly in the Federal Capital and some districts of Greater Buenos Aires, although the vast majority of sectional registries began to issue the new plates between the end of 1970 and the beginning of 1971.

The vast majority were small towns in the interior of the provinces or far from the big cities; this was gradually regularized when each registry mentioned began to issue a new assigned number series, already with the patent plates in the definitive format.

The repatents were programmed to reregister the entire remaining vehicle fleet from the newest to the oldest units, in that order.

However, a good number of vehicles received their new patent in later years, leaving very few cases of those that never did and the vast majority were abandoned units or that ended their existence as scrap.

In 1972 the national government standardized the plates, the format being one letter and six digits, with embossed characters painted white against a black background.

As the original format contemplated only six digits, a conflict was unexpectedly generated by incorporating another new digit using the same plate format and its typography, but the issue was quickly resolved by moving the province identification letter a little upwards and adding a number extra below it representing just the unit of a million.

The new design consists of three letters followed by three digits, and removes any clues identifying the vehicle's province of origin.

In a move to simplify the transition, all plates issued to vehicles sold prior to the cut-off date started with the letter R (and successively S, T, U, V, W, and part of the X series), while vehicles being registered for the first time received plates in a series starting alphabetically with AAA 000.