admission plates always followed by prefix. The prefixes are G= Bosnia and Herzegovina, U= Hungary, Z= All other countries. From 1919 until 1930, the plates format is the same as before but became authority supplied. From 1930 until 1939, the plates comprised one letter followed by five digits. (e.g. B 12345) The thousands of digits encoded the districts. From 1939 until 1945, the plates comprised two letters followed by a hyphen and seven digits. (e.g. W-1234567) This followed the Nazi German system. From 1945 until 1946, the plates comprised by a state coat of arms followed by maximum six numbers. They were only issued in the USSR-occupied zone. From 1947 until 1989, the plates comprised one or two letters to indicate the state or federal code followed by up to six digits (e.g. W 123.456), the first number block was reserved for vehicles, the second one was the serial, when they run out of serials they began to issue XX 999.A99. The background is black with white characters for private vehicles (unknown for all other vehicles). One or two letters are the prefixes set by state and federals, they are: B Burgenland BH Bundesheer (Federal Army) G Graz K Carinthia L Linz N Lower Austria O- Upper Austria (the dash after the letter O prevents misunderstandings with the number 0) PT Post & Telekom Austria (Federal Mail and Telekom) S Salzburg (state) St Styria (the only prefix with a lower case letter) T Tirol V Vorarlberg W Vienna (Wien) Diplomatic codes References External links Transport in Austria Austria Austria transport-related lists Registration plates