Illinois · sequential passenger map
Illinois license-plate format
Illinois passenger plates commonly show two letters, a space, and five 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
- AA 99999
- Classes
- 2 letters + 5 digits
- Alphabet size
- 26
- Skipped letters
- none modelled
- Combination count
- 67,600,000
- Model year
- 2001
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 67,600,000 — the size of the sequential space taught here. Hyphens, spaces and dots in AA 99999 are display only.
Illinois exhausted earlier three-letter blocks and opened a two-letter plus five-digit series. Vanity and land-of-Lincoln specialty plates sit beside this serial, not inside it.
Before this map, Illinois used ABC 123 and Abraham Lincoln stacks. Optional graphics (universities, military, environmental) can look nothing like the sequential passenger die and are not counted in the 67,600,000 figure.
Letter-first three-letter strings such as SPR 9932 are not the current Illinois passenger map.
Generated versus issued
A string that fits AA 99999 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.