I saw my very first “AAAA” license plate at the Loblaws today. It brought a thrill to my heart that only fellow license plate geeks can comprehend.
I also saw an “AW” plate, meaning that AX, AY, and AZ can’t be very far behind. So it’s only a matter of months, at most, before the first B- prefixes start showing up. I’m salivating in anticipation.
The 4-letter plates were introduced just before CapnPlanet moved to Californ-I-A, which I think, was in the summer of 1997. So it has taken just eight years to go through all the possible combinations that would have been available with the old style plates. It’s crazy how cars have multiplied, and become disposible, in our society. Makes me look at the hybrids as a real — and encouraging — future prospect.
TurtleHead 
Yes, summer of ’97 it was, and I remember the postcard you sent describing the new plates with four letters.
Have you ever determined whether the plates are assigned sequentially, or whether there are regional allotments? Way, back in the distant past, when they first stopped handing out new plates every year (yes, they used to do that, and yes, I’m old enough to remember it!), it seemed to me that I noticed a lot of the plates where I lived all started with D, and when we visited Toronto, they all started with S. So I’m guessing they block the plates by region, but of course it’s been a while since I had any data to see if they still do that…
I’m pretty sure they do allot the plates based on region. Here in Ottawa there is an unusually high number of “AC” and now “AW” plates — too many for it to be a coincidence. Plus, when they first started with the 4-letter plates, prefixes all the way up to “AR” appeared in the very first year. I must actually credit for pointing out that they were probably handing them out based on area, rather than actually going through the thousands of plates from AA to AR in just one year. Whew!