In French Indochina, license plates were white-on-black on XXX1111 type, XXX is location code.
In 2012 a blue strip with a "VN" will be added on the left-hand side of the plates, as required by the new ASEAN licensing agreement.
The leading two numerals refer to the various provinces and major municipalities of Vietnam, unless they are letters (AA, AB, AC, and so on) which signify that the car belongs to the Ministry of Defence – in which case the plate will be red.
The format for regular plates began in 1984, with a modification made in 2010 to increase registration capacity.
Motorcycles receive two-line plates of the NN-LL/NNN.NN (or equivalently NNLL-NNN.NN on registration certificate), which replaced the previous NN-LN/NNNN and NN-LN/NNN.NN format (which are still effective in circulation), with black lettering on white backgrounds.
Military motorcycles receive the two-line AB/123 format, where AB is the unit code, and 123 the number.