Taboo About Cherished Plates

Undoubtedly, the majority of cherished number plates end up getting registered to some high-end luxury saloon or super car, why is it that there is a taboo that cherished plates should only be bought for luxury cars.

In my opinion, any quick witted registration plate can transform an old boring family hatchback into an eye catching auto, not to mention add thousands onto the resale price if one chooses to sell the plate with the car.

If more people started buying plates for their run-around, this ‘taboo’ might just disappear in front of our very eyes. Thousands of plates can be found quite cheaply at DVLA auctions, Private sales and right here at cherished number plates.

Suitable Number Plates

I was looking around on the internet the other day and came across a few number plates on offer that would suit a couple of our well known citizens quite well given their recent screw-ups! Why don’t they just by these plates because as we all know, the publicity alone from the paparazzi would be so extensive every many woman and child would know about it, and after all there’s no such thing as bad publicity!

A couple of the plates I think would do just fine on a few celebrity cars are:

1. HA5 8EEN- Gordon Brown
2. HA5 8OOZ- Amy Winehouse
3. HA5 8UST- Jordon
4. HI5 8IKE- Chris Hoy
5. HI5 8ALL- David Beckham
6. HI5 8OAT- Ben Ainslie
7. HE5 8ENT- Jeffrey Archer
8. HE5 8ACK- Daniel Craig (James Bond)
9. IT5 8UST- Adam Applegarth (former chief exec of Northern Rock)
10. HU5 8AND- Guy Richie

Not bad eh? And of course the price tags are a little on the wrong side of £20,000 but I’m sure they wouldn’t mind loosening the purse strings a little!

Modified rides - are they cool?

Today more than ever all you have to do to see a heavily modified speed machine is just to step out onto the road and wait a few minutes. Your sure to see a few Scoobies, Vectras and even a couple of lancers whizzing around. My question is, why do some (not all) people decide to ruin a perfectly good car.

When you look at some modified rides you think, wow, he has put work, effort blood sweat and tears into that thing and it has really paid off. But then you see a little Micra ( with a ‘shopping trollies’ as I like tocall them) rear wing supposedly to keep the thing on the ground. Lets be honest lads, you chose the Micra or Punto or whatever because the insurance is great and the car was cheap. I say if your going to change anything on a car, especially noticeable features, put in a few extra hours at work or raid the saving, and do it right.

After all, good cars get noticed, while junkers don't!

Criminals Target Average Number Plates

I have been writing for cherished plates now for quite a number of weeks covering mostly the news. While I have been doing that I am noticing that some of the main stories to pass across my desk are those involving the theft of number plates and the use of them in organized crime all around the country.

Cherished numbers are at less of a risk because generally criminals will want to keep a low profile before and after a crime instead of having an eye catching registration plate drawing unwanted eyes their way.

However for those of us who have average old plates, dose it not seem a little odd that we aren’t taking extra precautions to make sure their plates don’t get stolen.

You wouldn’t leave your front door open during the night and just hope nobody decides in making off with the telly, so why do millions of us just leave our identities (in the form of our registration plates) sitting outside completely unprotected from theft.

Don’t get me wrong. Chances are that even if you leave your plate as it is you won’t become victim of plate theft, and it’s also true that thousands have already gone to the bother of getting their plates fixed securely.

In my opinion its time for everyone to wake up and smell the coffee. We live in a world of crime and it’s necessary to protect yourself. My advice is to anyone and everyone who’s plates are simply screwed on, go and get them professionally fixed to your car so that the only way their coming off.

'PEN 15' and 'ORG 45M' getting attention

These naughty number plates have caught the attention of radio DJ’s as they were being discussed on the Jo Whiley show. They are certainly going to attract lots of attention if you're seen driving around with one of these on your car!

Some of the attention might be pleasant and some not so! Either way, these number plates would be excellent for media grabbing attention. Perhaps it might be better if some company bought them for public relations, rather than an individual. Ann Summers perhaps …

They are not cheap, at 'PEN 15' being priced at £99,995 and 'ORG 45M' priced at £150,000. However the attention they would generate would be enormous, so would probably pay for themselves.

Number plate S 1 sells for new record

The Scottish number plate S 1 has sold for a new UK record price of £404,062.50 this evening at the Bonhams Goodwood Revival auction. The previous record, set only a few months ago was for the number plate F 1 which sold for £375,000.

The next most expensive plate was M 1 selling for £331,000.

This just goes to show that, in these tough 'credit crunch' times, there's still plenty of money being spent on personalised number plates!

Number Plate Theft Rising In Oz

It seems that number plate theft is not specific to just the UK. In Australia there has been a spate of number plate thefts from cars parked at train stations. Similar to the UK, these number plates are then put on other cars to commit crimes such as not paying toll fines and stealing fuel from petrol stations.

The Australian RACV has been issuing train commuters with special anti-theft screws, which would be used to attach the number plates with. These special screws cannot be undone with standard screwdrivers.

A lot of people have been wrongly fined for not paying tolls and being visited by the police for crimes they did not commit as a result of these number plate thefts.

ANPR technology leads to more cars being nabbed

With the increase in the number of cameras being equipped with the ANPR technology, the police is seizing more and more vehicles. ANPR stands for Automatic Number Plate Recognition.

This technology helps catch vehicles that have been untaxed, or haven’t been insured. They also help tracking down cars that have been stolen, or are unlicensed. These cameras can catch cars at the rate of 3600 per hour. They can be installed on cars travelling at a hundred miles an hour.

The DVLA say that over five hundred more vehicles were seized compared to the same time last year. They plan to install an additional two thousand units across a range of devices such as mobile vans, CCTV and fixed cameras.

Number Plate Recognition System Fails Down Under

Over the last few months one of the cameras reading number plates near a toll tunnel in Australia hasn’t been functioning as it should. Over six hundred and fifty drivers have been sent incorrect demands for payment for going through the tunnel. This tunnel, the lane cove tunnel has been running for over thirty-three years.

The operators of the camera system said that the cause of this was number plates having non-standard fonts and spacing. However they have said that they are working on rectifying the system to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.

Good car fun

I've really got to get a mobile phone with a camera in it. Walking into the office this morning, I saw a nice old Vauxhall Nova hatchback (I didn't get the number plate unfortunately). Nothing strange in that, you might think?

Well, upon further investigation, the black paint job appears to have been applied in a, shall we say, non-professional manner.

More accurately, it was applied with a paint brush!

In addition, some (what I can only presume to be 'kids') have scrawled some nice messages on it in chalk or felt tip or something.

My favourite message was "I love cabbage".

Class.

Avoid tolls by covering your number plate

Recently some drivers in Ireland have been trying to avoid paying toll charges by covering the front of their number plates up. There are cameras on the M50, which read the vehicle’s number plate and automatically issue toll charges.

However some drivers have been caught trying to avoid the tolls by covering the front number plate. They weren’t bright enough to cover the rear number plate as well, and ended up with hefty fines of up to €1,000.

In one case the driver claimed that he didn’t realise that it was illegal to cover his number plates saying that he had done it as a prank. Unbelievingly he got away with it and didn’t pay a fine or go to prison!

Worlds Most Expensive Number Plates

Below is a list of the ten most expensive number plates. The majority of these registrations have been purchased in the last couple of years. Also as you can see from the table, most of them have either been bought in Hong Kong or Abu Dhabi.

Surprisingly the number ‘8’ registration wasn’t the most expensive one in Hong Kong, as 8 is meant to denote luck. Unsurprisingly in Abu Dhabi the value of the number plate went up depending on how low the digit was.

The UK sneaks in one lowly entry in the eigth position for ‘F 1’ bought by Afzal Khan of Bradford.

Registration	Country	£
1	Abu Dhabi	£7.25 million
5	Abu Dhabi	£3.5 million
7	Abu Dhabi	£1.58 million
18	Hong Kong	£1.56 million
9	Hong Kong	£832,258
2	Hong Kong	£608,115
33	Hong Kong	£448,085
F 1	UK	£440,625
M 1	UK	£331,500
8	Hong Kong	£320,128

Drug dealer puts his number plate in it

I’d like to start of by saying I don’t know much truth there is in this story as it’s a few years old now, so please take it with a pinch of salt!

Apparently a few years ago a resident of South London purchased the car registration ‘1 E’ for a hefty sum. This number plate was then transferred to his rather large Range Rover. He then used this vehicle as his mobile drug dealing office! A good way of using number plates to advertise your business I suppose.

Police were tipped off about his illicit activities and soon caught up with him. They apprehended him in his vehicle along with a considerable amount of narcotics.

Number Plate Designs

Why oh why do British number plates have to be sooo boring?

Check out this for a design from Florida:

How nice does that look?

OK, I'm not really one for horses either, but I think it gets the point across. All the US states have nice-looking number plates which tell you something about the area they're from.

But no, not us. All we're allowed is a tiny little "GB" logo in the corner. Anything else, and you risk failing your MOT test!

Come on DVLA, let us have some fun and have some 'pretty' designs on our number plates and make driving just that little bit more fun!

Fog lights are for foggy weather!

What is the obsession with driving around with some people who drive with their fog lights on? If it isn’t foggy there is no requirement for using them. They might think it makes them look cool – in fact they look like complete #@&#!’s. Fog lights are very bright and in fact become a distraction if the weather conditions are fine.

In certain conditions it is even dangerous to have your fog lights on when they are not required. This is especially true in narrow winding country roads where there is a good chance of blinding the driver coming in the opposite direction.

Then there is the other extreme where people who drive around without any of their lights on when the weather is actually foggy! Let common sense prevail and pray that people use their fog lights for what they are intended for – when it’s foggy!

More Number Plate Spotting

Yes, it's more number plate spotting, I'm afraid. And bizarrely, both of today's examples were also on BMWs. There seems to be a glut of personalised number plates on BMWs around here. So come on Skoda Fabias. There must be some cherished number plates on one somewhere!

The first example was C3 SSA. It was illegally spaced as "C3SSA". I'm not quite sure what they were trying to spell. "Cessa", I would guess, but I have no idea what that might mean!

The second example is 13 SAM. This was in an illegal font, and the 3 was shoved up close to the 1 to make it look like a B (also illegal!).

I think this is beginning to say something about BMW drivers...

Diesel better for the environment?

ok, so I'm not a chemist or an exhaust emissions engineer or anything like that, but can somebody please explain to me how diesel is better for the environment than petrol?

It seems it's all about carbon emissions, or rather, CO₂. Now, whenever I'm behind a diesel (be it a car, van, lorry or bus), when they accelerate they tend to leave a trail of thick black smoke behind them which can only be full of carbon. You don't get this with petrol cars (unless they're really old and knackered), so how can this be better?!

If somebody could explain this to me, I would be eternally grateful. Thanks.

Why are caravans so annoying?

Don’t you just hate being stuck behind a long queue of traffic held up by a single caravan who shouldn’t even be allowed on the road? Many a time, I’ve been driving to a holiday destination in the UK, be it Cornwall or the Lake District where I’ve had my pleasant drive ruined by being stuck behind one of these monstrosities on a single carriageway.

These oversized wooden people boxes are far too big to be travelling down most of our country roads. Not only are they a nuisance, but they are also dangerous!

What possesses people to buy these hideous things, which use up all your fuel, when you can get a pleasant bed and breakfast, or even a luxury hotel for a fraction of the cost? I’m glad that Jeremy Clarkson at least agrees with me on this and I enjoy watching top gear ‘blowing up’ a number of caravans!

Something for all caravan haters to enjoy :)

Number Plate Spotting

I was driving to work today, as you do, and got bored. So I decided to spot number plates. It's early days, but I did see a couple of cherished number plates.

The first one I saw was LAM 6Y (Lamby, I guess. Alan Lamb, perhaps?!) which I believe was on a BMW Z3.

Then I saw MA02 GOT. This could easily have just been a standard DVLA number plate but I think it was actually one the driver had paid for, trying to spell MAGGOT in the process. Bizarrely, this was also on a BMW.

And that was all for today. But I shall be keeping my eyes peeled!

Back to school!

Yes, the long, hot (yeah right) summer holidays have passed in a flash once more, and it's time for the kids to start their return to school. This means an instant quadrupling of the traffic on our already choked roads. And boy did I notice it this morning. Most of my journey to work was at the dizzy speed of 5mph.

This gave me an idea for a way to pass the time - try and guess the price of any cherished number plates you see. But then I thought it could be a bit tricky to actually tell if you're right or not, so I decided on an online game. Guess the cherished number plate price is the fun new game on our site. Go on, have a go. See how well you know your number plates!

DVLA rakes it in!

The DVLA has made a profit of over fifteen million pounds over the last five years by selling information to a host of agencies, which include debt agencies, bailiffs, law companies and finance institutions. This data contains personal information of over thirty eight million British motorists. The type of information would include details of the addresses of the motorists. There is a good chance that the DVLA could be breaking the Data Protection Act (1998) and so there is going to be some repercussion of the actions they have been taking, to tighten up the Data Protection Laws. The DVLA only turned down two percent of the requests to get personal data information. Over one hundred and fifty companies have been given this information for a charge. The people they have sold private information to also includes those with prior criminal records!

New '58' number plates

58 Number Plates

Now that the new 58 number plates have hit the streets I decided to see if I could come up with any decent combinations that people might be interested in buying. I'm afraid my list is not great, but I feel these new style number plates just don't lend themselves to making words and names like the old styles did (that's my excuse, anyway!).

Still, here's what I've come up with - I'm afraid some of these may actually not be even legal combinations (e.g. you can't have an I in the first 2 letters), but it gives you an idea, anyway:

LE58 IAN HU58 AND BU58 OYS DI58 AND BU58 IES BU58 OYS KA58 AAH - (Rock the) Kasbah GA58 AGS - Gas Bags ?! MR58 ALL - Mrs Ball HI58 UNS - His Buns RO58 OTS - Robots (flakey, I know!) MR58 OZO - Mrs Bozo HA58 UNS - Has Buns HA58 UST - Has Bust HAS8 EEN - Has Been ASS8 ARE - Ass Bare PU58 ALL - Pus Ball (Hmmmmm) IT58 ONG - It's Bong!

If you've got any better ones, feel free to comment on this article or post to our number plates forum with your own suggestions!

Number Plate Fonts

It seems that some cars with cherished number plates think it’s ok to use a ridiculous font, making the registration nearly illegible a lot of the time. Not only is this a nuisance for the authorities, but after spending a pretty penny on a fancy registration, why would you want to go and ruin it with a tacky font? Most reputable number plate manufacturers would not allow the use of illegal fonts as they have to be licensed by the DVLA and I’m sure they wouldn’t risk losing this licence. So where are people getting these number plates made? The obvious answer would have to be the Internet. There are literally dozens of number plate manufacturing websites that allow the use to design their number plates with a whole host of options including illegal fonts and graphics. How do they get away with it? Well they say that these plates are for ‘show’ use only and not to be displayed on road cars, knowing perfectly well that the majority of these illegally designed number plates are going straight on a car! So what can the authorities do about this? Well not a lot by the looks of things as they Internet dealers seem to be all over the place. Some of them even set up in the Republic of Ireland, trying to evade the clutches of the UK authorities.

Motorway Lane Discipline - It's easy, really!

Now, I'm not one for moaning (honestly, I'm not), but I feel I must mention a topic close to my heart. Middle lane hogging on motorways.

Look at this bloke. He's obviously completely obvivious to the fact that there is absolutely no traffic anywhere near him (which is worrying), or he actually thinks this is the correct way to drive on the motorway (which is just as worrying). Either way, he's wrong.

For one, it doesn't help that it appears to be a BMW driver (joke!), and OK, so it's possible he's doing 120mph, in which case nobody will be overtaking him any time soon. However, I reckon he probably isn't, so everybody will have to pull out from lane 1 into lane 3 to overtake, meaning that the motorway is effectively reduced to two lanes. If the motorway had 4 lanes, he'd probably do this in lane 3, making all of the government's road expansion programmes redundant!

This kind of driving is causing many of the tailbacks on our motorways today and needs to be stamped out. However, as ever, the police just don't have the resources. So maybe we can all just do our part?

Until next time, drive sensibly!

Thanks to middlelanemorons.com for the picture!