I believe some American license plates show the year of registration in one of the top corners of the plate. I've also notice that the square the year is written changes colour, is there a colour code for all the years so that cops can indentify the year of car by this this colour instead of reading the numbers (which are usually in black and are quite faint)? It be useful to know so that the exact year of a car can be identified. With British license plates you can look up details about the car on the DVLA website, but you don't seem to be able to do this with the DMV. Also I think there is a thing with made-up license plates in movies and TV series (in The Sopranos various cars have had the same license plate)

Here a couple of examples:



You can just about see a "3". Does that mean 2003?