VB thought he would share some of John Pemberton’s limelight with this former Portuguese East Africa posting, first by showing the first new-series Mozambiquian plate I saw this morning, at the Tsetsekama Gorge viewing-point, in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. Luckily the car was stationary, enabling enough camera time to gather the details. The three letters and three-numbers are serial, and the final two letters are the regional code – in this case MC for Maputo (City). The lady driver thought the new series had been running for 4-5 years, though 2-3 may be more accurate. The plates are clearly manufactured in South Africa and they closely resemble current ZA practice – just as the new Swaziland plates do, too.
Car-park Find – new-ish MOC srs. from Maputo City.
The shield detail from the new MOC plates.
All the windows etched to deter thieves.
Below:
Tax documents for 2013 MOC.
But this is in 2013………………
65 years ago, if we had trudged round London with JP, we would have found a Lourenco Marques registration on a big American (Dodge?) car, LM 7667. This was from the original Portuguese East Africa plate type which commenced in 1930 and was issued until 1957, when the LLL-NN-NN series began – example below.
LM 7667 visiting London after the war, using the official ‘P’ which Portugal used for all its overseas territories. Although Mozambique was issued MOC no sighting has ever been reported. JP archive.
The only other photo of the LM code on a vehicle is this, and the origin is unknown….
Colour slide taken in Lourenco Marques/Maputo by an unknown spotter, perhaps in the 1960’s. VB archive.
This Beira-registered Ford Model A (c. 1932) stands in Johannesburg’s Museum of Transport and gives us our only photo of Beira plates on the car.
This classic BMW 2000 CSi was captured on Madeira in 1978. MBE 11-93 was coded B for Beira, the second city and a popular holiday place before Mozambique’s independence in 1975 and subsequent fall into chaos.. VB archive.
Thank you, Victor, for the very nice article. In May 2011 I have taken some pictures of Mozambique plates when travelling the country. In March 2011 I saw the blue fade Mozambique plate on a German plate meeting. It probably came directly from the German Utsch factory, but this is only speculation. In Mozambique I spotted only 6 new blue fade plate, 3 of them on brand new passenger cars, and 3 on extremely old (maybe recently imported) trucks. The observations support an introduction date of the blue fade version in early 2011.
The plates can be seen at the following link:
https://picasaweb.google.com/112586281309801788187/AfricanPlates?authkey=Gv1sRgCPuqhYai4dS7Ag
A good set of Picasa pictures from Mozambique, Ralph – thank you. From your sightings, it seems that an owner can make his own plate using the new layout, and not neccessarily have to buy the expensive? S.A.-made coloured versions. The car I saw was driven by a pair of handsome young ladies, whose wealthy Portuguese-stock father had probably made their car a gift for a 21st. birthday and of course, he included the best of plates!