In answer to OP contact dvla, pay small fee, make up valid reason to need to contact owner & you used to be able to obtain owners address

votchy – Member

I want to put a private reg on my car. The reg I want currently exists on another vehicle but I know nothing about it or the owner. How can I track down the owner and make an enquiry in to the purchase?
I understand this may upset some folk but I just fancy getting a reg unique to me that I can then keep every time I change my vehicle.

I had one once, it came with the car – the seller proudly told me “valued at £2k” no idea why, it didn’t read anything – it sort of looked like the reg of the Ferrari in Ferris Buelers Day Off, but not really, it was just some dudes initials I think.

I did what any rightminded soul would do as soon as I owned it, tried to sell it, because I don’t need a £2k bit of plastic, but I’d quite like a new MTB frame – this is where I discovered the difference between ‘worth’ and ‘value’ – it might have been ‘worth’ £2k, but only to someone with the exact initials on the plate and some sort of connection to the other 3 numbers, but it’s ‘value’ was actually negligible.
There’s hundreds of thousands of plates on retention, their owners hoping one day the right Mr. HJD 653 comes along and HAS to have it and will pay real money for it, and it HAS to be that exact plate they’re after, because if they’re just Mr. HJD there’s 999 other plates they can choose from and one will be £150 or so.

So, I registered with a agency that sell these sorts of things for £50 or whatever, if, they ever manage to sell it and in 5 years I got a single e-mail, reminding me that they were still listing it.

Ultimately, when it was time to sell the car, I told the buyer “The plate’s worth two grand mate” and he sort of nodded.

Anyway TL:DR

If you want a special plate, either be flexible about what you want and pay a little or try to buy the EXACT plate you want and expect the owner to want stupid money for it, because since there was a bit of a boom in ‘Private Reg Plates’ in the 80s and 90s most owners think they’re ‘worth’ a fortune, but they’re not really and if you do – don’t expect it to ever sell for what you paid for it.

Private reg plates are any easy way of identifying pricks. There is a sliding scale obviously. From bilious to bearable:
BO55 ***
A random number and then initials.
name spelled wrongly
Something funny about the occupation
Something funny about the vehicle.

I’m ashamed to admit I have one, but console myself that it’s in the last category so it’s just about acceptable.

But deep down inside I actually know I am a bit of a ****.

johndoh – Member

Got to be better than on a clio or similar as i often see.

CL10 LOL

I see a lot of “CL10” Clios near me, C (for Cymru) is the Welsh Area Code for number plates, Renault wisely registered a lot of their clios in Wales in 2010 with CL10 plates for obivous reasons.

Local potato farmer has T8TOES on his truck which (sadly) makes me chuckle when I see it.

Nope, again, he doesn’t. Maybe T87OES or T8OES

Best I saw was years ago on a white Merc convertible with pink leather interior: DV8

Got 3 – one on the car, one on one of the bikes and the other on retention.
All almost identical other than the number of digits.
The bike only having 5 upsets the plod as it means the small plate is perfectly legal to the mm 😀
Car and retention are one number different and 6 digits.
None are spaced or distorted and read fine.
Have them for a specific reason not as a vanity/show off and couldn’t give a monkeys what anyone else thinks.

Best I’ve seen around here for specific words is a Bentley with Y5 AVE and an X5 driven by a doorman/car sales bloke with TOR 10T which he had spaced for years to read TO R10T.

Steve Parish has the infamous Hearse with a form of PENIS……

nothing says i’m a fanny more than a personal reg.

Followed a crappy silver Merc today and it took me a few minutes to notice

BE57 DAD.

Quite liked it

Most memorable ones I remember seeing around Edinburgh:

B15 EXY on a pink Fiat Panda – My almost teenage son thought it was an encouragement to ‘be sexy’

S70 LEN on a pimped out Black Audi TT

I have no issues with a personalised plate, on the list of things that drivers do to or with their cars it comes waaaaaaay down the list, but I’d rather the number had an amusing quality, rather than just someone’s initials, or was really contrived.
Two I’ve seen that made me chuckle were H1 MUM, on a car on the M4 once, and N11 NAA on a car parked round the back of Trinity Road police station in Bristol.
A friend of mine managed to get an appropriate plate for her car, A10 COO, her birthday is August 10, and all of her friends know her as Coo, her surname is Cooper.

nothing says i’m a fanny more than a personal reg.

Not even a car that’s been lowered too far, wheels with huge negative camber, tyres too narrow for the rims, enormous pipe stuck out the back and loads of crap cut-vinyl stickers all over the windows and wings?
I know which shouts “I’m a complete tit!” the loudest as far as I’m concerned.

where’s the like button!

New forum coming 20….

Tiger6791 – Member
Followed a crappy silver Merc today and it took me a few minutes to notice

BE57 DAD.

Quite liked it

A £1 says the owner is a bitter divorcee who’s 6 months behind with maintenance and the CSA has declared on fatwa on him because of a “misunderstanding” with the VAT man.

**** chancers all of them.

New reg for P-Jay?
B17 TER 🙄

There is a Volvo V70 near me with a CYM sticker on the bumper, its numberplate is V70 CYM. Appeals to my OCDish side.

I am happy to report that MX5 2 GAY is still available for £250. If only I was more confident in my sexuality…

That’s got to be the perfect plate for one of those new Fiat 124 Spiders.

I’m not a fan of plates which try to say something, but attractive combinations are nice. If I found a nice 3 numbers followed by3 letters plate at a reasonable price I’d be tempted.

I’ve seen an Aston DB7 with J8 OND with the 8 placed closer to the O.

I’ve considered one for the wife, but just a normal style with her initials at the end, to help her find the car in a car park. She’ll try and get into the first white car she sees, then phone me to report the central locking malfunctioning rather than realise its the wrong car. When this possibility is raised she gets the huff. Then texts a few minutes later asking me what car we have. ‘A Verso’ I will reply. ‘I thought we had a Toyota’ comes the response. ‘Yes, a Toyota Verso’. ‘Are you sure it’s not a Yaris?’. ‘Yes, quite sure’……

‘I don’t know what floor I parked on’. Neither do I dear, I wasn’t there.

The fun never stops in this house.

Boss at Pfizer had V14 GRA when I worked there, that’s quite cool

Boss at Pfizer had V14 GRA when I worked there, that’s quite cool

Apart from the vast majority of people won’t know he’s the boss of Pfizer and will assume he’s just another 63LL END.

FTW

A girl near me had a Citreon that had a standard plate that had DOH at the end so she stuck Homer Simpson stickers all over the car 😀

A colleague has PA55 SED and another guy I know of has LE55 ONS, both on Driving School cars.

Done well, I think they are quite fun. I have one with my initials which I like (obviously).

Car specific plates can be a bit odd – I saw someone with an X5 number plate on a poverty spec 1 series recently. Perhaps they are thinking ahead?

nothing says i’m a fanny more than a personal reg vanity plate.

FTFY.

I knew of a guy with a Triumph Mayflower with the original reg of ‘OPT 8’
He was offered a load of £££’s for the plate alone by an optician but didn’t sell.

Father in law bought a car years ago which coincidentally contained my wife’s name.

He always said she could have it when he died, so she did.

She explains this to everyone she meets, just so they don’t think she bought it herself.
🙂

Currently on a shonky old Punto.

hammyuk – Member
New reg for P-Jay?
B17 TER

Nah, What’s the plate for someone’s who couldn’t write humor if he tried?

If you’re going to do it, do it properly.

There is nothing more worthy of pointing and sniggering than someone is who is narcissistic enough to want a private reg plate, but can’t afford one that actually works and conveys what the owner wants.

No need to pour scorn, their lives obviously have something missing, so it would be unsporting.

I can never read them in any way other than what they are. I’ve struggled to see anything other than number plates for two pages now. Replacing letters with numbers or vice versa is plain daft and should be met with scorn and a furrowed brow

NO 2 FUN?

Best I’ve seen around here for specific words is a Bentley with Y5 AVE and an X5 driven by a doorman/car sales bloke with TOR 10T which he had spaced for years to read TO R10T.

I’m assuming the second one means “to riot”, but I’m not getting the joke, and I’m drawing a total blank on the first one.

Had historic plates on some work vehicles where I used to work. They were replaced quite regularly and made remembering registrations for the fuel card a lot easier as well as not having the admin costs for ammending the fuel cards.
On the quiet they were vanity plates, as from first vehicles on the estates.

You could also get a south pacific tribal tattoo and then pop your collar as well.

Both would go well with a private reg.

Seen a black audi in perth with MAD 41T a few years ago.
I’ve got to admit, it made me giggle.
Wouldn’t consider one personally.

I had one a while back, just a 6 digit with my initials.

Got rid of it when I realised how uncool it was. Thankfully I made money on it, paid £250 and sold it for £2200! My dad has one that is worth a few quid and as he’s about to give up driving he’s offered it to me to have it on my car. Torn between having it or not, might put it on retention.

I’ve no problems with other people having one, as long as it’s in a legal spacing and font. Ones that are modified just scream ‘Idiot’* to me.

* insert suitable expletive.

The best I’ve seen are:
2 BAD
WH05 DAT
GU55 WHO
Whilst the last two clearly have to be read phonetically to work they are the antithesis of plates that try to tell you who the owner is, which makes me smile.

I also like:
OR51 VET – read: ‘orsey vet. Owned by our local equine vet.

I’m not a fan of plates that sort of spell something that then the owner has spaced badly or doctored using black screws in random places, like the one I saw yesterday that quite clearly had two additional screws between the 11 part of the ref to make it look like an A. I’m all for the police throwing the book at them.

I quantify this by saying that I do have private plates: my Volvo S60R has S60 RVV on it which I feel is acceptable as it’s the Model and it’s is one of only 350 ever sold in the uk so a tiny bit special.

My other half Kate has KT55 BUG on her Beetle which I’m amazed was available and even more amazed that it was less than £500!

kcr Y5 AVE = Why Save

I wouldn’t have one myself, but BRA 38B on a white Range Rover driven by a brassy-looking blonde woman made me smile.

There used to be a car in the Bristol City FC car park with the number plate HE5 2 FLY.

I guess they are called W_nker plates for a reason.

OK, I get it, but it seems a bit obscure!

I used to live next to someone who had a regular visitor driving a Bentley with the reg “G2”. Many years later I found out by accident that it belonged to a member of well known Glasgow family who made a lot of money in mining and property. The story I was told was that mum had G1 or something similar on her Rolls and the kids had G2, G3, etc on their cars. I believe this chap is one of the brothers:
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/flash-thug-parades-spanking-new-1165831
Draw your own conclusions…