Colorado · sequential passenger map
Colorado license-plate format
Colorado passenger plates commonly use three letters, a hyphen, one letter and two digits. In this atlas the pattern string uses A for a letter slot and 9 for a digit slot. Other characters are separators that appear on the metal but do not enlarge the combination space.
- Pattern
- AAA-A99
- Classes
- 4 letters + 2 digits
- Alphabet size
- 26
- Skipped letters
- none modelled
- Combination count
- 45,697,600
- Model year
- 2000
How the map works
Each A slot independently takes one glyph from ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ. Each 9 slot takes 0–9. The product of those bases is 45,697,600 — the size of the sequential space taught here. Hyphens, spaces and dots in AAA-A99 are display only.
Colorado mixed county coding with green-and-white stacks for years. The AAA-A99 style grew out of the need for more slots while keeping a readable hyphen.
Before this map, Colorado used ABC-123 and county-coded stacks. Optional graphics (universities, military, environmental) can look nothing like the sequential passenger die and are not counted in the 45,697,600 figure.
County design variants still follow the same character classes even when the mountain graphic changes.
Generated versus issued
A string that fits AAA-A99 is in-class. It is not automatically an issued plate. Series can skip blocks, retire numbers, or reserve low digits. This essay never queries a motor-vehicle file. See also generated vs issued.