Car owners make reservations to choose personalized number plates in Guangzhou on October 4, 2008. [Photo: Xinhua]

Car owners started reserving personalized number plates on Saturday in Guangzhou to avoid long queues next Monday when the city officially initiates the service.

Xinhua news agency reports that visitors without reservations will be turned away on Monday, according to the vehicle administrative station of Guangzhou, capital of southern China's Guangdong Province.

So far about 1,800 small-car owners are listed to register their cars on October 6 and 7. The process takes less than half an hour and only personal dates need to be provided.

Li Bin, director of the local vehicle administrative station, said there were two styles to choose from. One option is for car owners to select four numbers and a suffix letter from the range "0001 E" to "9999 Z"; the other is to select one prefix letter, three numbers and a suffix letter from "A 001 A" to "Z 999 Z."

Desirable number plates that have the same third and fourth digit such as "33," "66," "88," and "99" will be separately released at auction. Statistically, there are 700,000 valid combinations to select from.

Local authorities decided that no more than 1,355 car plates will be released daily.

In addition to the new number plate system, the city will soon extend the number of plate options for each car owner from five to ten.

(CRI October 6, 2008)