Aviation related car registrations

I know a Yakolev owner whose numberplate is xx52 YAK

A neighbour has a very short UK numberplate worth a fortune, something like T14. He used to buy and sell vintage Rolls Royces and Bentleys so probably got it free.

With a friend, I saw OTPHJ on a Florida licence plate. I can’t be young any more because he had to explain it to me. There’s a whole wall of plates at the DMV and you just pick one, or you can create your own for $15.

Peter wrote:

so if say you had PEN 1S (again from an older “normal series”) you weren’t supposed to arrange it as PEN1S, but you could do so. Of course that one would have never been issued

Actually, that registration was issued. I saw it once on a Porsche 928 (a good few years ago) in a small town near Tunbridge Wells. When I mentioned seeing it to the friends we were visiting there, they told me the plate changed hands quite regularly. People buy it thinking it will be a laugh, but quickly get fed up with the continual insults.

I’m amazed number plates can reach such astronomical values elsewhere. In Germany you pay s small fee (12,50€ or so the last time I did it) for your desired plate, otherwise you get a random one. Selling a plate to another private person would be illegal from my understanding (which doesn’t mean it doesn’t take place).

Vanity plates are obviously hard to achieve here due to the first couple of letters being determined by the place you live in and the plates generally not having more than five letters and three numbers or four letters and four numbers.

MedEwok wrote:

Selling a plate to another private person would be illegal from my understanding (which doesn’t mean it doesn’t take place).

I don’t see how it can happen unless the authorities agree to update their registers — if they don’t the plate would still be registered to the original owner with all kinds of repercussions for both the original and new owners.

Airborne_Again wrote:

if they don’t the plate would still be registered to the original owner with all kinds of repercussions for both the original and new owners.

Yes, that is the main reason why one re-registers immediately, usually. I remember when I bought my first car (used, from a private seller), I drove away with his license plate. I was very worried I’d have an accident, because the seller would have gotten into trouble too if I did (legally, it was still a car insured by him). Thus I re-registered immediately upon arriving at home.

This, I thought was one of the better ones

A guy in some US state asked for “NO PLATE”. He got it. No problems until the weekend, when lots of computer time was allocated to checking for new data relevant to unsolved crime.
On Monday a neighbour called him at work. Several Post Office 18 wheelers and a police car were at his house. The computers had summonsed him for every crime report where a car had been mentioned, but no reg. was known.

MedEwok wrote:

Vanity plates are obviously hard to achieve here due to the first couple of letters being determined by the place you live in

Happily the first couple of letters in my wife’s German area were her initials. When that was no longer the case, she moved out of the country :-)

I used to have F1Y CM but the police and DVLA busted me and threatened confiscating the car unless I changed the spacing. I just got rid of it and let it lapse in the end.