A Mini-Moke in London in the 1960s with the ultra-rare pre-Belize series for British Honduras. C=Corozal.      AND with a BH oval, properly manufactured by the RAC.     Bet they didn’t sell many of them!                        Gray archive.

Soon after the Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow was launched about 1968, this Bahreini emir brought his new car to London. Gray archive

YV – 105    A blue Venezuelan export plate seen in London in circa 1969. Gray archive.

WAN Nigeria – LU 7416.    A batch of new  Willowbrook-bodied Leyland Comet buses passed through Kettering in the late 1960s in transit to London docks and their sea-passage to Nigeria.     Already plated for use with the Lagos City Transport Service, and using a green background not usually associated with WAN plates, they were running on Leicestershire AY trade plates.       (NOT Alderney!)            Gray Archive 1968c

Y+20006, a Vauxhall Viva estate car from the British (definite) embassy in Saigon  during the 1970s.     Photo’d in England in 1976, carrying an unofficial ‘oval’ of (VTN). it seems that the car could have previously been posted in Budapest with its diplomat owner.   (See postscript 29 Sep.2013)       Gray archive

Y+00137   Here’s another VN GB embassy plate, this time on a Land Rover in Saigon, 1970s.     Brumby archive

Mowqati 673, an Afghan Foreigner (M and green) from Kabul ,on a Mercedes 190 in Britain did not escape TG’s eye or camera.    A very rare sight indeed.        The overseas-issued Automobile Association badge is of interest, but the country of origin crest is illegible.     Gray archive c.1972

L 8829 ADEN     Aden was a moderately-frequent ‘spot’ in the 1960s, due to the active commercial and military establishments in that then-British colony.    Aden was administered from British India from the 1910s and employed the BI system, with code ADN.    Under later colonial administration, it changed in the 1950s, first to the prefix 2ADN, when, reaching 9999 again, L, then M and N became the leading letters used in the Aden Colony.   (No-one knows why those letters were chosen).    Independence and the later amalgamation with South Yemen closed down sightings and info from that hot zone, for many years after. The car is a French Renault Floride, seen in GB.       Gray archive.

AUSTRIA FOREIGN RESIDENT/EXPORT SERIES.      Graz is the registration area for this German-built Ford Taunus 17M, photo’d in Austria in 1973 before leaving for its ultimate export destination.     Most European countries offered a facility to purchasers from abroad, to collect their new European car, tax-free, from factory or dealer, to tour Europe for up to 6 months and then return it to the supplier for shipment to their country of origin – or even drive it home themselves.     With their acquired mileage they could be imported to their home countries as second-hand cars, so that their local import duties would be lower.      Tens, if not hundreds  of thousands of vehicles were supplied under these tax-free schemes.        Gray archive.

MT-6282  —  Andorra’s duty-free foreigner export series valid to 1975.     MT =  ‘Temporary Matriculation’.                                   Gray archive 1974

Sf 38-16  —  White plates were issued to privileged Party members in pre-democratic Bulgaria.     This fortunate citizen had a  Sofia-registered Renault Dauphine and was allowed a passport to travel to Monte Carlo, where this picture was taken by member Terry Gray in the 1960s.   The series used the Cyrillic alphabet and  ran from 1958-85.

ZH 300 723     This is a puzzler.    A rear Swiss plate with no canton shields?    And in a poor (un-Swiss) condition.        And mounted in an odd place.      Was it perhaps a trade plate of the period (1960s) Any help, readers?    Gray archive  (silence May 2014!  Help!)

Well – which of us needs THIS identifying?

YOU do? Try French West Africa…… VB archive                                                                      Francoplaque’s  Jean-Emmanuel  is quite correct with his answer of  SENEGAL, until 1960 French West Africa/Afrique Occidentale Francaise) (AOF) .   The Citroen 2cv is from area 1 (Cap Vert (Dakar, capital city)) and the letter C is a serial letter, issued before independence in 1960, after which the letter ‘S’ was inserted  before the area number  (e.g. 0132 S 1 .C)                  Fascinating to think that, had the car travelled outside Senegal in those times, it would have carries the unseen(?) AOF international oval.   The photo is by non-member Murray Bailey in about 1973, in Dakar.          In the background, in a sad state, is a French-registered Citroen Light Fifteen Traction Avant, still carrying its French plates 505 MS 38 (from Isere).