I was considering giving up on writing this article about license plates, because I thought it would just end up being boring. After all, what is so special about license plates?

[English]

Estava pensando seriamente em desistir de escrever um artigo sobre as placas de carro no Brasil ou na América Latina, porque pensei que seria um assunto chato. Afinal, o que as placas tem de especial?
Porém, ao ler os textos d...

In France, the plate is linked to the vehicule. The official colors are white in front and white or yellow at the rear.

[English]

France
En France, la plaque est associée au véhicule. Le modèle homologué, ce qui signifie que (normalement) tout le monde a la même couleur de plaque : blanches à l’avant et jaunes ou blanches à l’arrière.<...

在德国东部小镇格罗斯奥贝尔村，坐落着世界上唯一的一座车牌博物馆。博物馆中有一块长方形金属车牌，上面只写了一个“1”字——这应该是现在保存下来的最古老的汽车牌照了。1899年，...

At first, the license plate was able to be placed anywhere on the car. The vehicle owner was responsible for the design of the plate, including the size, color and style until the early 1900s, when Germany began to unify the license plate system.

A license plate in Japan is nothing special. All plates consist of a strict sequence of characters and numbers. For example, 東京２００か１０－１０. The first Chinese character is the name of the City where it was issued. 3 random digits ar...

[English]

日本のナンバープレートに関して言えば本当に質素です。たとえば,
“東京２００か１０－１０”などが例で、どこでそのプレートが発行されたかが表示される漢字3桁の...

[English]
在北京当交警不容易，因为路上行驶的车牌号中有很多门道。京城里边云高水深，卧虎藏龙，一张车牌的背后可能就隐藏着一个权势人物。身为交警，必须能够快速分辨出路面上...

Being a traffic policeman in Beijing is not easy — because you have to know a lot of underlying rules. In the heartland of this country, behind a number plate there may be a dignitary. Being a traffic policeman, you should be smart enough to det...