Sunday 13 April 2008

Personalised Number Plates: How to be a Wazzer on the Cheap

I've never understood why people are prepared to pay shed loads of money for personalised number plates - most of which stretch credibility trying to make intelligible words out of a motley mixture of numbers and letters. They might just as well wear a bumper sticker reading 'I'm a Tosser'.

You know the sort of thing; ' D4N13L' for 'Daniel,' etc. Or the initials and low numbers ego trip, like 'AM 913'. Which just means that 910 people with the initials AM have got more prestigious ones than the man in front. (The other two are owned by someone's ex wife who won custody of the Porsche, and a Cornish broc grower in St Buryan named Janner Spargo, who's beggared if he's going to sell the AM 2 reg from his old Massey Fergusson to some emmet from across the Tamar who doesn't belong go messing about with other people's numbers in the first place; "By gar, mazed thickerd! Wozee goyn dowidden, boy?")

Now I've just had a brainwave. Instead of spending £20,000 on a registration number with your initials on, change your name by Deed Poll to suit your existing registration number. You can do that for just £7.99.

From next week Brother Tobias will be changing his name to Urquhart Vaughan Longbottom. How cool will I be! You may call me Urq for short. Ansom, me luvver.

Of course there is the slight downside that if stopped by the Police, I will not only be unable to recall my registration number, but also my name.

13 comments:

  1. I was stuck behind some 4x4 monster the other day, driven by a young blonde trophy wife type, her registration was '4 Em'.

    A plate that says 'my rich husband bought this for me' - she's driving around in an extension of HIS ego.

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  2. How do you spell 'Eeuch'? I wonder if he treated himself to a matching one with '4 ME'.

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  3. Hi Urq! The best I saw was an English car pulled up outside the Argentine Embassy in London, with WE 1 on the numberplate. Er, don't mention the war! M

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  4. That's a goody, Marianne. Although as a Scot, I think 'wee one' isn't something I'd want to advertise!

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  5. Chiswick is heaving with 4WDs with personalised number plates - which say two things to me: (a) you're secretly a chav even though you're pretending to be a sloane, and (b) you could have spent that extra money on a nicer car...

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  6. Lucy, yes! I think you've invented the chav sloane (Cloane? Slav?).

    Marianne, I am sofa king thick; I've only just got the WE 1 joke. Damn.

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  7. Oh my GOD I've just had the best ever small-business startup idea - buy up cheaply all the personalised numberplates nobody wants (AR5E, W4NKER, etc) and sell them at vastly inflated prices to the likes of Abramovich etc who don't know what it means but want a numberplate that's obviously tres exclusif (don't know the Russian for that but hey). "Slav" I think is already in use (see above).. and "Cloane" sounds too Soho verbally.. will rack my ginger brains for an alternative.

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  8. It's a great idea. Although it would be nice if they could also be awarded to deserving cases by the courts - Jeffery Archer springs to mind, or that Bliar bloke who falsified the arms dossier...

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  9. Like the Scarlet Letter indeed, Lucy. Only you're better read than me, and I had to look it up.

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  10. Interesting that you're so vocal about personalised number plates. And I see there are a few others willing to jump on the bandwagon. I'm not quite so negative about them...the good ones can enhance a car. But the naff ones really are....well....naff! See http://personalnumberplates.wordpress.com/2008/11/15/personalised-number-plates-invoke-strong-comments/ for my thoughts on your post.

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  11. Hello Cinnamon Girl. I loved the video clip you linked in your post.

    I guess it's the 'look at me' statement that personalised number plates seem to make that irritates me (nobody loves a show-off). And why it should matter to the owners. It feels like a not very classy ostentatious display; like wearing a medallion. But I appreciate some people might think it enhances a car. I see you're in the business of marketing them, so I respect your bravery in linking some opposing views!

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