International ovals

Ovals are stickers that are attached on the rear of the car and it needs to show the country where it comes from when it's abroad. History of ovals starts at the beginning of the 20th century: because international traffic increased it was deemed necessary to put nationality marks on vehicles and 12 countries, included Italy, decided to introduce ovals (1910). Later, even if at different times, ovals spread all over the world in almost every country. But paradoxically ovals were substituted with the nationality mark directly on the plate itself just in Europe, where they were born (see Italian plates of 1999), following directives of the European Community. In this way the mess about ovals (you can easily see a plate from one country with an oval from another one as a souvenir of a trip!) is going to be reduced and it should be easier to drive across Europe where borders don't exist any more.

Codes of ovals are controlled by United Nations (Distinguished Signs of Vehicles in International Traffic), but in spite of this I found many tables of codes with many differences between one another. Moreover some codes are not official, though in use and some borders changed in recent years creating new countries: all these things made my research about ovals even harder and I've got doubts about many of them.

In the first picture you can see an oval from Italy, in the second an oval from San Marino, while in the third picture CD stands for Corpo Diplomatico (diplomatic corps) and in the forth picture CC stands for Corpo Consolare (consular corps): they aren't official ovals (you cannot find them on the table below, but the CC oval was often used on cars of the consular corps before the consular plates were created in 1997), but you can see them on the rear of some diplomatic and consular vehicles.

In the table there are only those codes in use today, with the origin of the letters (when known), the year it was introduced and the history of ovals previously used in that same country. In many cases you can read "unofficial": it means that that code is not official, though in use. I hope that notation I used is clear enough.

(*) The oval SB is also used by Seborga, though it is not official. If you are interested, in the page about the small principality you can also find a picture where you can see such an oval.