Personal and Private Number Plates Fact Sheet

A vanity plate or personalized plate (US), prestige plate, private number plate, or personalised registration (UK) or custom plate or personalised plate (Australia and New Zealand) is a special type of private vehicle registration plate on an automobile or other vehicle.

The owner of the vehicle will have paid extra money to have his or her own choice of numbers or letters, usually forming a recognisable phrase, slogan, or initialism on their plate. Sales of vanity plates are often a significant source of revenue for North American provincial and state licensing agencies.

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In the United Kingdom, number plates are issued by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA). They do not approve personalised registrations if they contain words which are offensive in any widely used language. UK plates have to match certain very strict letter/number combinations, including the following:

* XXX 999
* 999 XXX
* XXX 999 X
* X 999 XXX
* XX 99 XXX

For ordinary registrations, many of the letters are fixed; for example, in the first four above, the second and third letters (and in the fifth the first two letters) have to correspond to the original registration district of the car, and not all combinations have ever been used. In the first four, the numbers can be one, two, or three digits.

Registrations can be sold, or transferred from one vehicle to another, with some restrictions. Originally the only vanity plates allowed to be transferred were ordinary registrations that had been transferred, but in the 1990s the DVLA began selling personalised registrations unrelated to the registration districts.

There is some additional flexibility available by using numbers that resemble letters (e.g., S for 5), or by using large black-headed screws to fix the plate to the car to fill in a gap. However, the font style, size, and spacing is mandated by law, making the practice illegal.

Some plates only acquire significance because of particular owners. For example, "COM 1C" was formerly owned by the comedian Jimmy Tarbuck, magician Paul Daniels had "MAG1C", the 1967 plate "BEL 12E" is owned by the Belize High Commission, and "CHN 1" is owned by the Chinese embassy.

In the UK, there are a large number of private dealers who act as agents selling DVLA registrations, as well as their own stock - often purchased at auction or from private sellers.
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# The highest reported price paid for a vanity plate worldwide is USD 14 million. The vanity plate "1" was bought at an auction in Abu Dhabi on February 17, 2008. It was purchased by Saeed Khouri, a member of a wealthy Abu Dhabi family.


# Former Mayor of New York City Ed Koch is an adamant supporter of vanity plates. He has a vanity plate that reads: "MNYKOCH".


# Using official vanity plate listings from the DMV, Daniel Nussbaum wrote PL8SPK: California Vanity Plates Retell the Classics, a book of classic stories (such as the Oedipus legend), entirely in the vocabulary of vanity plates ("PlateSpeak").


# A story about a vanity plate is connected to the first ever wiki.


# A randomly-generated Florida plate which read "A55 RGY" appeared to read as "ASS ORGY" if the orange in the center of the plate is interpreted as an "O".

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1. How was this new format chosen?


A consultation exercise in 1997 invited the public and interested organisations to give their views. The system that has been developed meets the needs of the vast majority of respondents in providing local memory tags and age identifiers. These will be easy to remember and require no significant changes in materials or overall number plate size.


2.Why did the rule on fonts change?
An increasing number of motorists use number plates that are difficult to read. The introduction of cameras for enforcement purposes means that it is more important than ever for number plates to be legible. The new regulations will ensure that there is clarity of numbers and letters through the use of a standardised mandatory font.


3. Are there plans to make the Euro-plate compulsory?


No, it is optional. The provision has been introduced because the European Council issued a regulation in November 1998 requiring Member States to recognise the Euro-symbol on number plates in place of the traditional oval shaped national identifier sticker for travel within the European Union. It is for individual motorists to decide if they wish to use the new Euro-plate.


4. Can other symbols (e.g. national flag, football team crest) be used on number plates?
The Government announced on 28 December 2001 the intention to permit the display of national flags and symbols on vehicle number plates.When the regulations are amended they will provide for the voluntary display of the Union flag, Scottish Saltire, Cross of St George and Red Dragon. Football team crests etc are not allowed.

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