Vanity plate

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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, vanity plates have a different color scheme and design.

Some vanity plates may resemble regular issue license plates, as this one from Pennsylvania does. It references the number of New York City Fire Department members killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.

An example of an obscene license plate in Wisconsin, BUKKAKE.

This Georgia plate is a railroad reference and relates to a locomotive. Note the county name "Catoosa" on the bottom of the plate.

A custom plate from Victoria, Australia.

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^[1] 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.^[2] 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.^[3]

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]}. Examples of such are: HEXYEBO (literally, 'undickly', meaning 'not bad' or 'does not suck'; CAM XAM, 'you yourself are rude'; TPAX, a rude reference to intercourse; 3-14 3DA, a visual pun on female genitalia; CTEPBA, bitch; KYPBA, whore; XPEH BAM, up yours; etc. www.anekdot.ru often lists such plates in stories submitted by readers: http://v2.anekdot.ru/an/an9902/t990207.html#67

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, magician Paul Daniels had MAG1C, 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.

1 Vanity plates in film and television
2 Trivia
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[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. (His evil mis-programmed prototypes, seen in two popular episodes, read KARR)
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 '32 Ford deuce coupe hot rod driven by John Milner 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"
The film Elvira showed a license plate of the protagonist saying KICKASS.
A character in the film Con Air has a licence plate saying AZZKIKR.
The leading character Sarah Tobias in the 1988 movie The Accused, had the plate SXY SDIE.
The character Missy from Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey has the plate MISSY.
The antagonist from the movie Jeepers Creepers has the plate BEATN U (Beating You).

[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