|
When my father ordered his first new car, he was horrified to find that the letters on the registration plate would correspond to his initials. He cancelled his order and re-ordered from a dealership in a different area, purely to avoid this embarrassing co-incidence. “It would look as though I’d done it on purpose, to show off,” he said with a shudder. Like father, like daughter, and I too have cherished a lifelong horror of personalised plates. I simply can’t understand why people want to force the letters and numbers into something vaguely resembling their name, or a faintly suggestive pun, or some other convoluted joke. And as if the ‘joke’ weren’t unamusing enough the first time you see it, presumably the personalised plate holder needs to enjoy the same joke day in, day out, every time he goes out to his car. Ugh. Yet, come June 5th, the DVLA Personalised Registrations scheme will, apparently, see thousands of motorists buying humorous combinations of letters and numbers from the new 57-series registrations. Oh well. Each to his own.
|
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
I think the DVLA is taking HUGE liberties with the folk who do enjoy personalised plates. For example, a plate like K1 NGS is really only extremely valuable if you are allowed to space it as K1NGS - but the law does NOT permit this, so how are the DVLA getting away with charging such ridiculous sums for letter/number combinations which do not actually spell the words which they imply?
I believe they are encouraging buyers to mis-space the characters on their plates and thereby break the law.
B457ARDS!
And if you’re wondering – yes, I did once buy a personalised plate.
Gerry Pollard | 14 May 07 - 17:19Even allowing for legal spacing, I think TO55 ERS probably spells it out.
Graham Whyte | 15 May 07 - 16:37Private/personalized plates have recently become Big Biz in UAE, and a private plate recently fetched 25 Million UAE Dirhams (Close to 3.5 Million Sterling) at a charity auction. Charity Auctions aside, plate numbers are selling for obscenely large sums of money on a daily basis.
The only time I ever considered looking for a personalized plate was many years ago in my “Spotty Youth – Frogeye Sprite” days when I thought that “MJB 1” would be a neat response to Simon Templar’s “ST 1”.
However, I now agree that the entire scenario belongs to the ”P1ONKER5” Brigade.
AlfaMartini | 15 May 07 - 18:05@Gerry Pollard: That would certainly seem a good way of the DVLA making more money, I believe they can fine for lack of spacing.
Joshua Goodwin | 21 May 07 - 20:13Yes, they can fine you - and even take your personalised plate away from you, irrespective of how much you paid for it!
Gerry Pollard | 23 May 07 - 18:51