I got a VW Golf 2 years ago, it was a dealer demo. The plate is white on blue. I asked the dealer why this was, he didn’t know (or didn’t care to elaborate). Some other cars in the showroom all had standard plates. Since then, I’ve seen a lot more blue plates but they’re almost all VW’s. I found a Reddit topic about it where other people have noticed the same thing but no one seems to know why. They seem to be reserved to the CBA-CBC range. Does anyone have any ideas how and why they were allocated to certain VW models?
NSW Blue Plates for VW cars
bozbargain on 22/12/2021 - 22:45
Last edited 22/12/2021 - 22:46
Last edited 22/12/2021 - 22:46
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Wrong. They are typically called “trade plates” (due to the word “Trade” stamped into them and they are used in the automotive trade)
Trade plates in NSW are mostly black on yellow, or white on maroon. They certainly don’t start with CBA~CBZ. They usually start with one letter followed by 4 or 5 numbers.
What does you rego papers say? You're probably paying extra for personalised plates. It likely also means it wasn't a demo but used.
Where should I look on my rego papers? All I can see listed is the registration fee and the motor vehicle tax?
There'd be a third line there I'm not sure how it's worded but it'd be obvious that it was a charge for custom or personalised plates. if it's not there I can't explain it as those plates definitely aren't standard issue. The colours range are $255pa
Is it something to do with that VW ‘blue motion’ thing? Might just be a bit of a publicity stunt in for area, particularly if it’s a narrow range of plate numbers. The C series is getting a bit old now.
I haven’t noticed it before, doesn’t mean much though unless you are looking for it.
From that Reddit topic I learned this:
CBA-CBZ series are allocated to white-on-blue series.I’m just curious more than anything and the fact that Google doesn’t seem to know either makes me even more intrigued. Most of the time I notice another blue plate, it’s a Golf or Tiguan, and the kids have spotted a few plates already that came with the same first 5 letters/digits.
Interesting. I just did a random search of regos in CB?xx? Range. Lots of them were invalid, but 3 came up with a range of vehicles ages, a couple were vw, but most were not.
Might just be coincidence, or maybe you just haven’t noticed other cars with blue plates.
Yes it’s mostly CBC-xxx that I’ve noticed with a good share of CBC-0xx.
CB = CarBlue
It would have just been when the local VW dealership went in and grabbed a bundle from the RTA at the time this is what was available. They might buy a bundle of 100 plates at a time as new cars are registered at the dealership.
If you were to check those cars, you would find that they were all sold from the same dealership.
Interesting, didn’t realise that that is how it worked with plates, RTA and dealers.
Vw corporate colours are blue and white too.
This, or potentially ex-VW corporate cars which the dealers hadn't replaced the plates on when they sold as "demos"
Yes, could be, my 'demo' was used for 2 months by a VW employee. I never really understood the whole demo thing, I was happy to get it at what felt like a good discount with less than 1k mileage. Still, I doubt that all the blue-plated CBC-xxx Golfs you see around Sydney are (ex-)corporate cars though?
Now that you've mentioned it, I've seen a couple of CBC plated cars today and they aren't just Golfs, have seen T-Roc and a Tiguan with the plate.
@mini2: Yes, it's definitely something you normally wouldn't pay attention to unless someone points it out to you!
I don't think I've seen a blue-plated T-Roc yet but definitely a few Tiguans.@bozbargain: Saw an 2014ish Hilux with CBA4xx an hour ago. Doesn’t look like VW head office took the entire block, probably by sheer coincidence they somehow ended up quite a few of them.
Demonstration plates are blue and are commonly called car dealership plates. These plates are used for showcasing vehicles to customers, moving vehicles from bond stores to dealerships, and for promotional purposes such as automobile shows.