After yesterday’s bellicose tirade against the stupidity of paying good English pounds for personalised number plates that make about as much sense as drunken Scrabble, I followed a good example on the way home.
To the blond girl in a gold Golf, index number tango-sevener-zehro-tango-echo-yankee do you really want to be known as misspelt T7OTEY. Just rearrange the letters and squint to conjure up a vision of Tim, nice but dim.
She was attractive, young had good taste in cars and was, I don’t doubt, an exceptional home maker, keen on needlecraft and the holder of an honours degree in advanced stellar indexing. So why drive around telling planet testosterone you consider yourself to be a vapid clothes horse with a catholic taste in men? Would she have bought a plate that spelt SLAPPER? That, by the way would be S14- wrong way round 9-PER. Geddit? No, me neither.
Oddly enough at the same time Chris Evans was ribbing a captain of industry who imagined his far from exclusive registration plate - on a Bentley, mind - starting NGE would let everyone know is name was Nigel. How?
It could easily mean national grid engineer, no gears engaged or indeed that the car it was originally on was first registered in Northampton. Now there’s an idea.
Only his family would realise it stood for Nigel. And it’s a sorry family that can’t remember your name until you run them over.
Car industry press fleets have some neat indexing. Vauxhalls are all VXL, Nissan trys very hard, the Qasquai I have just driven had the plate X2O VER for ‘crossover’ and they own L1UST on a 350ZX, which sums it up nicely. Porsche once owned A 911 and probably still do and Ford had plates CAR 1 and CAR 2.
Generally speaking, though, personalised plates are just that, meaningless to others and as intimate to you as your medical records. And you wouldn’t stick them on the rear window would you?.
And if you have a personal plate and I’ve upset you sorry, but I have also just upset my mum, who has the plate A1LMA. My mother wants people to think she’s a lama?
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Windowlicker wrote...
I have seen a number of strange number plates which spring to mind.
But the best must have been a small red car with the plate VA61 NNA.
The man inside it looked very pleased with himself!
Posted by: Windowlicker | May 11, 2007 6:28 PM