Vanity plate
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A vanity plate (US), prestige plate, private number plate, personalised registration (UK) or personalised plate (Australia) is a special type of 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. In some jurisdictions, such as the Canadian province of British Columbia, the vanity plates look totally different from the regular issue plates.
In some states and provinces, optional plates can also be vanity plates and are a choice of motorists who want a more distinctive personalised plate. However, the maximum number of characters on an optional plate may be lower than on a standard-issue plate. For example, the U.S. state of Virginia allows up to 7.5 characters (a space or hyphen is counted as 0.5 character) on a standard-issue plate, but only up to 6 characters on many of its optional plates.
In many jurisdictions, such as New York<ref name="nydmv">NYS DMV Personal Plates Look Up & Ordering (English). Internet Office Transactions. New York State DMV. Retrieved on 2006-10-07.</ref> and Virginia, a motorist may check the availability of a desired combination online.
All American states and Canadian provinces that issue vanity plates have a "Blue List" of vanity plates that list banned words, phrases, or letter/number combinations. The American state of Florida, for example, has banned such plates as "PIMPALA", whilst the state of New York bans any plates with the letters "FDNY", "NYPD", or GOD, among others.<ref name="smoking gun">BLUE LICENSE PLATE SPECIAL (English). The Smoking Gun. Retrieved on 2006-10-07.</ref> Often the ban is to eliminate confusion with plates used on governmental vehicles or plates used on other classes of vehicles. However, a licensing authority's discretion to deny or revoke "offensive" vanity plates is finite. For example, some U.S. motorists have successfully sued their state governments on that issue under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution[citation needed].
Many Russians in the US entertain themselves by trying to use English letters to spell Russian words on their license plates. Some English letters look exactly the same as some Russian letters, often with different pronunciation. For example, MOCKBA reads like a Russian word Moscow and CAMOBAP reads like a samovar. Many Russian license plates in the US might be considered offensive[citation needed].
In the United Kingdom, number plates are issued by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency. They do not approve personalised registrations if they contain words which are offensive in any (widely used) language. Some plates only acquire significance because of particular owners, e.g. COM 1C was formerly owned by the comedian Jimmy Tarbuck while the unremarkable 1967 plate BEL 12E is owned by the Belizean 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.
In Australia the various states offer personalised plate schemes, with some states having a yearly fee to maintain the cherished number. In the Australian state of Queensland the personalised plate scheme helps fund the Road Safety Activities Fund.
As of 2006, Denmark, Hong Kong, Latvia, Poland and Sweden also allows such license plates.
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[edit] Vanity plates in film and television
- The game show Bumper Stumpers was wholly based on guessing fake vanity license plates for cash and prizes.
- In the American film Falling Down, the main character William "Bill" Foster, played by Michael Douglas, is known through most of the film by his California plate serial: D-FENS (as he was employed by a defense contractor).
- In the American television program Knight Rider, KITT's vanity California plate read KNIGHT.
- In the American television sitcom Seinfeld, Cosmo Kramer was mistakenly issued a set of New York plates that read ASSMAN. It was later determined that they belonged to a proctologist. New York does not allow the use of the word "ASS" on either their regular or vanity plates.
- In the Back to the Future trilogy, the DeLorean time machine's California license plates read OUTATIME.
- One of George Lucas' early films was a science fiction vision of the future titled THX 1138, starring Robert Duvall. In a later Lucas classic, American Graffiti, the hot rod driven by Harrison Ford has a license plate that reads THX 138. California had not gone to seven-digit plates yet. This however was not a vanity plate, but just a homage to the previous film.
- In the TV show Reno 911! several first season episodes open with two cops chasing a car and reading the plate into the radio. When they realize it's a vanity plate and try to figure out what it reads they end up crashing into the car.
- In the opening credits of L.A. Law, a California vanity plate reading LA LAW appears on the back of a Jaguar, though in later episodes, the plate is mounted on a Bentley.
- In the 1977 movie Smokey and the Bandit, the Pontiac Trans Am driven by Burt Reynolds (the Bandit) has a Georgia vanity plate that reads BAN ONE signifying his CB radio call sign "Bandit One." This was one of the first movies, if not the first, to prominently feature a vanity plate. During the movie, the Sheriff asks a citizen if he saw the plate on the car and the citizen spells out the license plate.
- In the 1990 Columbo episode Columbo: Columbo Goes to College the car used by the Criminology Department to reconstruct the murder of Professor Rusk has a vanity plate reading CRMNOLG.
- In the 1984 movie Ghostbusters, the Ghostbusters' 1959 Cadillac Miller Meteor Ambulance has a New York vanity plate reading "ECTO-1"
[edit] Trivia
- The highest price paid for a vanity plate in the UK is £330,000, paid at auction on 7 June 2006 for "M 1", beating the previous record of £285,000 paid by Roman Abramovich for "VIP 1". It has been widely reported that M 1 was purchased by a man in the north-west of England, who bought the plate for his eleven-year-old son.[citation needed]
- A little story about a vanity plate is connected to the first ever wiki: English Sports Car: C2.COM
[edit] See also
- Australian vehicle number plates
- British car number plates
- US and Canadian license plates
- Danish car number plates
- Hong Kong car number plates
- Polish car number plates
- Swedish car number plates
[edit] References
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