In Germany the letters and numbers on a licence plate follow restrictive rules. The first letters designate the city or county, were the car is registered. A big city has a single letter (like B for Berlin or M for Munich), smaller cities or couties have two or at a maximum three letters.
Then there is a hyphen (old style) or just a space (new style) containig the emblem of the county and (at the cars rear) the vehicle inspection sticker.
This is followed by one or maximum two letters.
At the end there is a number with minimum two to maximum four characters (but there are also some restrictions, e.g. a county with three letters never has a number with four characters).
So the highest joy for a german cardriver is a licence plate containing his initials, his birthdate or a number like 1000, 777 or something like this.
Depending on the county the car is registered, you may also choose combinations like AN-NA, LA-DY or even SE-XY.
The BMW corporate cars usually are registered in Munich, so the licence plate beginns with M-, but M-INI is an impossible constellation.
To get the MINIs have MI-NI in their plate affords that the cars are registered in the city of Minden to have the MI at the first letters.
BMW registers a couple of their MINIs for a marketing purpose via a local car dealership in Minden. And they did it as well for most of the MINI Es being part of official test programs.
The number 1231 is one of the simplest ones you can choose.
To say it at a german point of view: MI-NI 1231 is something very special.
Although it looks clear, not all people understand the connection of the car and the licence plate. A friend of my father asked me: Are you living in Minden now?
And as I was charging the MINI at a public charging station a pedestrian asked me: I see, you come from Minden. How do you get access to a charging station in Munich?
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