Knowing the registration date of a vehicle makes it easier for us to do any operation we want to carry out. It is one of the estimation factors when determining the market value of a car.
The Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) defines enrollment as the identification plate that vehicles carry, made up of a series of numbers and letters, and that enables them to circulate. Being completely true, the reality is that tuition is much more than that. What at first glance is a metal plate with numbers and letters serves to know the age of a vehicle and its registration dateas well as some extra data from its colors.
It is not a trivial matter, since the date of registration of the car and its age usually coincide, but this is not always the case. In the end, a vehicle can be re-registered under certain conditions, so it must be check the registration date through specific ways to really know the data surrounding a vehicle from the numbers and letters – never vowels – that appear on its license plate.
The importance of the registration date
Knowing the actual registration date of a vehicle is very important, especially if we are going to face a buying-selling process. Knowing the registration history of a vehicle – if there is more than one – we will know the real age of a car, the date of manufacture and the date of execution of each registration or if it has been registered or deregistered, in addition to whether it is a model valid for circulation or has some type of charge or encumbrance. Questions that allow us to know the market price of a car and its status to avoid deception by third parties.
All the information provided by the registration date is essential, but not only to know the age of the vehicle, but also the details of its configuration. Knowing the date of the first registration, it is possible to investigate whether the car in question was purchased as the latest model, with the newest engines and equipment, or if, on the contrary, it was already purchased with an old configuration that does not correspond to the current model in the date of its putting into circulation.
A car’s license plate allows us to calculate its age.
How to know the registration date of a vehicle
There are different options to know the day, month and year of registration of a car, from the 100% reliable methods based on the vehicle’s documentation or offered by the General Directorate of Traffic (DGT) to what can be considered estimates, but that at a given moment can help us know the age of a vehicle. Depending on the circumstances and needs of the moment, it is recommended to opt for one or the other.
Circulation permit
If we have direct access to the car’s documentation, The registration date is reflected on the registration certificate.. It is one of the fastest and easiest methods to know the registration date of the vehicle in question, although we cannot always do it. This data is found in Section I of the documentso your consultation is very comfortable.
Of course, we do have the option of checking the registration date through the circulation permit. Care must be taken to look at Section I and not Section l.1since it is specified there the date on which the driving license was issued. As we have already said before, this does not have to coincide with the original registration date of the vehicle if a deregistration order has been issued.
Data sheet
Another option to know the registration date of a vehicle is to go to its technical date. It is not as direct a way as the previous one, but knowing where to look is not a problem. It is true that in the technical sheet there is no section with the official registration date as such, but this information can be extracted from Another piece of information that does appear is the date of the first issuance of the Technical Vehicle Inspection (ITV).
The date of the first MOT issue usually coincides in most cases with the year of registration of the vehicle., except in the exceptions such as those of a ‘kilometer 0’ vehicle. Yes, it is true that in this way there is this margin of error and that we will not know the exact day and month of registration, but in the vast majority of cases we will know the year of the first registration of the car.
DGT report
If we do not have access to the vehicle documentation, something that may be normal if we are in a buying and selling process, There is the option of requesting the vehicle report from the General Directorate of Traffic. It is a quick, simple and reliable way to know all the vehicle data. The car’s history will serve to know not only the date of registration of the vehicle, but also whether it has been deregistered at any time or the owners the car has had.
The DGT makes two types of reports available to drivers and users, one reduced and the other detailed. In both cases you can request through the DGT website or the organization’s App or in person. The reduced report is free and includes registration, make, model and most importantly, the date of first registration. For its part, the complete report has a price of 8.67 euros if it is ordered online or in person, an amount that can rise to 12-20 euros if the procedure is carried out through an agency.
There are other more ‘homemade’ methods to find out the registration date of a vehicle in Spain.
Other methods to know the registration date
There are other options to check the registration date, although they are no longer as reliable as those mentioned above. First of all, you can go to the DGT statistical portal, within the vehicle section and then entering registrations. By applying a series of filters you can know the vehicle’s license plate, but for that you have to have some information about it. Yes indeed, This option is only valid for cars after 2010.
The second possibility is to consult private websites, although the databases of this type of portals are usually less reliable., like is logic. In fact, in this case, rather than obtaining the vehicle registration date, we must be aware that what we are going to obtain is an estimate of the date. Along these lines, if you have access to the digits that appear on some parts of the vehicle, you can also make an estimate of the manufacturing date and thus know more or less the possible registration date.
Likewise, if you only want an estimate of the year in which a vehicle was registered, There are tables on the Internet with which to link each year with the range of Spanish license plates with European regulations that were issued during that year. -without provincial indicator and with 0000 BBB format-. For example, in 2020, registered vehicles carried plates that ranged from the letters LDR to the letters LLC.