We have just added a new “Personalise Your Registration” feature to each registration plate page. Using standard registration plate character substitutions (eg swapping a number 3 out for a letter B) the table (which is just for fun) shows you some of the possible permutations for your own registration plate.
Check on each page to see how it looks for each registration plate.
As well as seeing your car registration plate in the standard issue white and yellow on each car registration page, you can now see it as a USA registration plate. We’ve started with four blank plates from Florida, Texas and Pennsylvania – and even the legendary Gotham City, so you can see how your car would look with Batman plates.
Having a look over the logs today, I can see a number of trends for March:
The No Region number plate that begins with the letter K (Kxxx xxx) is topping the most searched for registrations on vregs.com. K is noted on Wikipedia as “There is no official name ascribed to the letter K by the DVLA, although reference may be made to the ‘K’ in Milton Keynes – the new town that is located between the two ‘K’ DVLA offices.”
K is closely folowed by M (Mxxx xxx) for Manchester and Merseyside, beating London (Lxxx xxx) by a considerable margin. Who would have though that? Why are a greater number of people checking car registrations in and around Merseyside than London?
Scottish registration plate searches (Sxxx xxx) are third in the rankings with vregs.com – again unusual as Scotland has a population of 5.1 million and London (Greater) has a population of over 7.5 million.
More interesting (?) statistics next month.
In Feb 2011, new car registrations fell by 7.7% to 63,424 – a figure seen as lower than some industry pundits were speculating. This compares with the expected drop over the first half of 2011 of a reduction of 8.3%. Interestingly, February only accounts for 3% of annual new car sales – it is low because of the march registration plate change.
In descending order, the top ten best sellers in February are:
Vauxhall take five of the top ten positions.
A British museum is auctioning off its treasured collection of famous cars. The Lake District “Cars Of The Stars” museum is selling the lot on eBay. The lot includes the Batmobile, KITT (pictured) , the Back To The Future DeLorean and Del Boy’s classic yellow Robin Reliant.
Don’t forget – registration plates will be changing from 60 (for the latter period of September 2010 to March 2011) to 11 (March 2011 to September 2011).
Examples of this are the change from LA60AAA to LA11AAA on the 1st March 2011.
Vehicle registration change day was always a great time for me as a child – I would inevitably be on holiday somewhere in the UK and my parents and I would always rush to spot the first new plate. Although the excitement has now gone from that, at least I can do it twice a year now.
Peter Swatton of ‘Cherished Marks’ (or Cherished Registered Marks) has unlawfully managed to gain around £70,000 from 24 customers by selling them falsified personal registration plates. Swatton, 54 from Titchfield, Hampshire has denied four counts of obtaining money by deception and 20 counts of fraud.
The Vegetarian Society of Richmond, Vegan Action and the Richmond Vegetarian Festival are working towards getting the required 350 orders necessary for the launch of the USA’s first vegetarian themed car license plate. See the image for how the plate could look. The plate will be available for a $10 surcharge, or you can pay $20 should you require a personalised plate.
If you have £100,000 to spare, the registration plates “O11″ and “11O” (that’s an Oh not a Zero in each case) are coming up for auction. Each are valued at £100,000 and it is the first time that each of these has been on the market at the same time.
F is the initial first letter denoting vehicles registered in Forest and Fens, including two registration centres Nottingham (FA to FP) and Lincoln (FR to FY). All other first letter prefixes (with the exception of Temporary Export Plates X running from A through to F) include the letter O as the second letter – Forest and Fens is unique in not showing an O.
Why is this?
