VehiclesDB

Iceland license plate: District

Retired 1938 to 1989. Standard plates for car, van, truck, bus, motorcycle, and tractor, issued by Samgöngustofa (Icelandic Transport Authority). One of 11 Iceland license plates.

Iceland license plate, District (1938 to 1989), sample S-89002
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Format, years and the law

Format
L-99999, for example S-89002 (L is any letter, 9 any digit)

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
1938 to 1989. No longer issued.
Vehicle class
Standard: the default series issued to private road vehicles. Issued for car, van, truck, bus, motorcycle, and tractor.
Colours
Characters #FFFFFF Background #000000
Size
520 × 110 mm · every country's size
About this plate
No pre-1988 Icelandic vehicle-registration regulation is held by reglugerd.is, so neither the 1938 reform nor the letter index has a primary here; the decode file names the best unclosed lead (a pre-1988 regulation cited by Hagtíðindi 1989 as "nr. 40"). NOTE THE SUNSET: the old plates were not merely superseded, they were withdrawn, 78/1997 34. gr. required them off bifhjól and eftirvagnar by 31 December 1997 and off everything else by 31 December 1998, so a pre-1989 plate on a road-going Icelandic vehicle today is a vintage-scheme plate under 751/2003 30.-31. gr., not a survivor.
Region code notes
The letter decodes the district of the OWNER'S DOMICILE at the time of issue, not the vehicle's home, not where it was used, and not anything after a sale.
How numbers are issued
Sequential within each district, but the number followed the OWNER, not the vehicle: a sale across district lines produced a NEW number, and an owner could carry his number to a new car. That is exactly what 1989 abolished.
About the format
Digit width is likewise unsourced: it grew with motorisation and no instrument fixing it was retrieved, so 1 to 5 is an observed envelope, not a grammar. The two-letter codes JO, VL and the three-letter VLE are why the letter group runs to three.

Legal basis and sources

  1. 34. gr.: vehicles registered before 1 January 1989 may keep old-type plates, with sunsets of 31 December 1997 (bifhjól, eftirvagnar) and 31 December 1998 (others). PRIMARY, and the source of this series' end date. https://www.reglugerd.is/reglugerdir/allar/nr/78-1997
  2. VII. kafli 'Skráningarmerki samkvæmt eldri reglugerðum - notkun þeirra': 29. gr. governs vehicles registered before 1 January 1989, 30.-31. gr. vintage vehicles. PRIMARY. https://www.reglugerd.is/reglugerdir/allar/nr/751-2003
  3. is.wikipedia.org https://is.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%BAmeraplata
  4. 2026-06-08): the same index; 'From 1 January 1989, all further use of those plates was forbidden (except for vehicles that already had them on)'; the post-1989 district-emblem sticker. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_Iceland

Before and after

Iceland license plate, Standard 1989 (1989 to today) Replaced by Standard 1989 1989 to today

This plate in your app

The series id is is-district-1938. The API returns its format, validation, colours and designs with the rest of Iceland's series:

curl -s https://vehiclesdb.com/api/v1/plates/is \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $VEHICLESDB_API_KEY" \
  | jq '.series[] | select(.id == "is-district-1938")'
Check plate formats in your app

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