Owners looking to take advantage of rules that allow them to fit black and silver number plates to any Land Rover registered as a Historic vehicle may find they won't be able to.
Since the extending of 'Historic' status to Land Rovers over 40 years old in 2015, a quirk in the law meant that owners could also fit black and silver number plates – so you could run a 1978 Land Rover on black and silver plates, even though they would not have been allowed to when new.
The rules have now been changed – and an amendment to the legislation means that only Land Rovers with a construction date prior to 1 January 1980 will be allowed to display black and silver number plates, despite being in DVLA's historic tax class.
This will be a blow to owners of military vehicles which are approaching 40 years of age. Those Land Rovers would have worn black and silver plates showing their military equipment registration mark (ERM) during service, and the vehicles can look good with the age-related civilian number plate in black.
The new legislation will be implemented shortly, and will also contain rules preventing you from fitting a number plate with the Euro symbol from 1 January 2021, and a new British Standard for number plates will be introduced from 1 September 2021.