Volvo Registrations

[mac219]

I've been browsing the net looking for a secondhand XC60 and have noticed a large amount of vehicles have the registration prefix 'KT' or 'KY' ?

Are these former volvo fleet cars ?

[Paul Wildsmith]

yes, I think so. Many will have done quite limited mileage so can be a good buy (at the right price).

[PJordan]

Usually ex-hire cars from the likes of Hertz. They are a good buy as they have been maintained to a very high standard as part of the Volvo agreement with the hire companies, usually low mileage also.

[Sotosound]

Originally Posted by mac219

I've been browsing the net looking for a secondhand XC60 and have noticed a large amount of vehicles have the registration prefix 'KT' or 'KY' ?

Are these former volvo fleet cars ?

Any company that buys vehicles from a manufacturer and registers these vehicles with DVLA is assigned a “Dealer Code” by DVLA. This includes retailers, leasing companies, rental companies, public sector organisations etc. The manufacturers themselves will also register vehicles for internal use such as company cars and will be given a DVLA Dealer Code.

This Dealer Code also has a Regional Identifier attached to it. This Regional Identifier also has a series of Regional Prefixes for registration marks associated with it. So, for instance, the Oxford Regional Identifier has prefixes such as OA, OB, ….. OX and OY associated with it.

Therefore, any vehicle registered by a company that’s associated with the Oxford Regional Identifier will be given a registration mark starting with OA or OB, or OC etc. My wife’s Skoda Fabia VRS, which was registered by an Oxford-based Skoda dealer therefore had a registration mark starting with OV.

Regional prefixes KT and KY are linked to the Northampton Regional Identifier, meaning that whoever bought and registered vehicles that were given these registration marks has Northampton as the Regional Identifier that’s linked to their DVLA Dealer Code.

If a large number of nearly-new Volvo XC60s have KT or KY as the first two letters of their registration marks then this would suggest that they were either: -

1) Bought and registered by a rental company with Northampton as its DVLA Regional Identifier, who rented them out for a few months and then sold them back to Volvo for refurbishment and resale as Approved Used Vehicles.

Or

2) Registered by Volvo themselves as internal company cars provided that Volvo has Northampton as its DVLA Regional Identifier. These would have been driven by for a few months by Volvo employees and then refurbished and offered for sale as Approved Used Vehicles.

It's also worth noting that these days the Regional Identifier doesn't always correspond to the address of the company that owns the vehicle being registered, nor to the geographical location of the vehicle being registered.

Therefore a vehicle being registered in Durham by a rental company based in Worthing could pick up a Reading prefix if the Worthing-based rental company has Reading as its DVLA Regional Identifier.

This is a long way from the days when one could determine the geographical origin of a vehicle by its number plate.

[skippyfox]

It's very likely to be a former Volvo UK car. My V90 has the KX prefix and the small print so to speak on the bottom of the plate says Volvo UK, a quick look on the log book shows one previous owner as Volvo UK.