How old is a 17 plate car?
A 17 plate covers six months of registrations, so there is no single answer to the nearest year. A car registered on 1 March 2017 and one registered on 31 August 2017 both wear it, and they are nearly a year apart. Today that means 17 plate cars are 9 years old.
That six-month spread is worth remembering when you read an advert. Two cars listed as the same model year can be a plate apart, and the later one is worth more. The V5C gives the exact date of first registration, which is the number that actually matters. Our V5C guide shows where to find it.
MOT and car tax on a 17 plate
A car needs its first MOT three years after it is registered, so 17 plate cars start needing one from 1 March 2020, and the last of them from 31 August 2020. Every one of them is well past that now, so each should have an unbroken run of annual tests behind it. A gap in that record is the first thing worth asking about.
Car tax on a 17 plate depends on the exact date. The system changed on 1 April 2017, in the middle of this window, so a car registered in March 2017 is taxed for life on the old CO₂ bands while one registered from April is on the flat standard rate. Same plate, different bills, sometimes by hundreds of pounds a year. Our car tax calculator works out the current figure either way.
What the rest of the plate means
The two letters in front of the numbers are the area code, and they record the DVLA office that first issued the registration rather than where the car lives now. In FE17 XYZ the FE is that code, the 17 is the age identifier, and the last three letters are random. Our area code index covers all nineteen regions, and the free plate decoder reads any registration back in full.
None of that tells you how the car has actually been treated. The MOT record does, and it is free to read: our MOT history check shows every test, every advisory and every recorded mileage for any registration. When you want the whole picture, the £5.00 report adds the tax status, spec, keeper changes and a photo.