Cyprus license plate: Standard 1990
Retired 1990 to 2013. Standard plates for car, van, truck, and bus, issued by Έφορος Μηχανοκινήτων Οχημάτων / Τμήμα Οδικών Μεταφορών (Registrar of Motor Vehicles, Road Transport Department). One of 5 Cyprus license plates.
The three-letter format everyone recognises as "old Cypriot", which no instrument ever defined. White in front, yellow behind, and still legally alive for any vehicle that never re-plated.
Format, years and the law
- Format
-
LLL999, for exampleEBW271(L is any letter, 9 any digit)The letters just count, with two exceptions: until 9 July 2010 a leading T marked a public-use vehicle such as a taxi, and Z a self-drive hire car. The prefixes were then deleted, leaving the rental car's dark-red plate to do the talking alone.
The format above is broad: a registration that fits it has the right shape, which does not show that this series issued it.
- Years issued
- 1990 to 2013. No longer issued.
- Vehicle class
- Standard: the default series issued to private road vehicles. Issued for car, van, truck, and bus.
- Colours
-
Characters
#000000Background#FFFFFF - About this plate
- The 1990 boundary is a secondary date with no gazette reference; all 67 CyLaw Κ.Δ.Π. year indexes 1960-2026 were swept and nothing in 1989-1991 is a series instrument by title. If the change was published at all it would have been as a Γνωστοποίηση, and none was found, so this is a well-evidenced gap rather than a search shortfall. The END is likewise soft in a way that matters: 2013 is when the new Schedule commenced, but Καν. 4(δ) leaves these plates lawful with no end date, so they remain on the road and this series overlaps the current one permanently. A LETTER-PREFIX FACT THAT BELONGS TO THIS ERA: Κ.Δ.Π. 66/1984 Καν. 6(5) required a «Τ» prefix on public-use vehicles and a «Ζ» prefix on self-drive-hire vehicles, wording that goes back to Κ.Δ.Π. 159/1973 Καν. 6(3). Both prefixes were DELETED by Κ.Δ.Π. 291/2010 Καν. 2(α), which was not among the deferred paragraphs and so took effect on publication, 9 JULY 2010, three years before the new plates. From that date the taxi and rental distinctions moved from a letter to a colour. 6(5) in 2010.
- Region code notes
- none, on the same sourced negative as the current series, there has never been a district code in Cypriot law
- About the format
- 66/1984's Second Schedule required only that the plate bear «τα παραχωρηθέντα υπό του Εφόρου γράμματα και αριθμούς», so there is no instrument fixing three letters, three digits, or any letter set for this era. The three- letter/three-digit shape is a secondary description of the Registrar's practice.
Legal basis and sources
- Κ.Δ.Π. 66/1984 (Ε.Ε. Παρ. III(1) Αρ. 1937, 8-3-1984): Καν. 6(2) (the Registrar grants the marks); Δεύτερον Παράρτημα παρ. 2 (the ENTIRE content specification, gazette page 331); παρ. 3(γ) (white front / yellow rear).... https://www.cylaw.org/KDP/data/1984_1_66.pdf
- Κ.Δ.Π. 291/2010 Καν. 3 repeals that Second Schedule and Καν. 4(δ) keeps it alive for unreplated vehicles indefinitely, this series' END, and the reason the end is soft https://www.cylaw.org/KDP/data/2010_1_291.pdf
- Revision 1344966818 of 2026-03-23T15:33:51Z. NO primary exists for this boundary, see notes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_Cyprus
Before and after
This plate in your app
The series id is cy-standard-1990. The API returns its format, validation, colours and designs with the rest of Cyprus's series:
curl -s https://vehiclesdb.com/api/v1/plates/cy \ -H "Authorization: Bearer $VEHICLESDB_API_KEY" \ | jq '.series[] | select(.id == "cy-standard-1990")'
- Plate image (SVG, sample serial): https://vehiclesdb.com/plates/cy/cy-standard-1990.svg
- Blank template, filled on your side: https://vehiclesdb.com/plates/cy/cy-standard-1990/template.svg
