Make Your Car Stand Out With A Personalised Number Plate

There are millions of cars out on the roads today and the majority of people own cars that do not stand out from the crowd. If you have the money, and can afford to invest in a Maserati, Bentley, or Porsche, then your car will stand out from the crowd, but if it's a Ford or Vauxhall then it looks the same as everyone else's Ford or Vauxhall.

However, there is a way to make your Ford or Vauxhall stand out and that is by fitting it with personalised number plates. It may surprise you to learn that there are literally millions (around 50 million) personalised registrations available to buy, and they don't all cost an arm and a leg. Certainly, there are some number plates that really do cost a small fortune such as 51 NGH, KR15 HNA, AMS 1 (on the Rolls belonging to Alan Sugar) 25 O (on a Ferrari 250SWB once owned by Eric Clapton, but now by Ferrari dealer John Collins), and H14 RDO (on the Range Rover owned by hairdresser Nicky Clarke). But they are not all in that league.

Indeed, you can actually buy private number plates that cost less than £200 – plus the present £80 transfer fee charged by the DVLA. There is another cost involved if you are selling or scrapping the car and want to keep the number plates, and that is when you need a V778 retention certificate. If you buy the plate but don't want to assign it to a vehicle immediately you need a V750 certificate to hold on to it. Both of these cost £25 a year, but are free to obtain initially.

Buying a personalised number plate is fairly straightforward, since you can log on to the website of a number plate dealer and simply enter the plate that you want into the search box on their site. This will tell you almost instantly if the plate that you want is available or not, and if it is available will often, but not always, tell you the dealer's asking price. The reason that the price is not always shown is that some of the rarer plates are worth a considerable amount of money, and the dealer may want to enter into negotiations over the price. If you find the plate that you want, and it is priced, then all you have to do is to order it online.

Before you start looking for a personalised number plate, it is best to have several different ideas in mind. The reason for that is that you probably won't find your first choice is available, and that may go for other choices as well. So if you want 6 DOG you can't have it as it is on a vehicle owned by a racing greyhound trainer. For all we know, that may apply to 1 DOG, 2 DOG, and so on. There are also registrations that are banned by the DVLA for being too risqué. The recent 68 number plates that are banned include BU68 GER, OR68 ASM, DR68 GGS, BA68 TRD, and a good few more along those lines.

There are also certain things that you cannot do, one of which is to make an old car look younger than it is. So if you have a vehicle that was first registered in 2010, you can't put a 68 number plate on it. You can't start a personalised reg with the letter "Q" and you can't put a personalised plate on a "Q" registered vehicle. You are also not allowed to make the plate look different by the use of fixing bolts or other means, and neither are you allowed to alter the spacing of letters or numbers. In some of these cases you can face a fine of up to £1,000 and you can also lose the right to the plate.

There are lots of things that you can do with number plate combinations, and some people use them for business purposes. Pimlico Plumbers owner Charlie Mullins has several plumbing-related number plates on his vans such as BOG 1, LAV 1, F1 USH, S1 NKS, W4 TER, DRA 1N, and so on. They are so well-known by his customers that they actually phone in to request a plumber by his number plates!

Mark Hunt is a specialist UK dealer in personalised number plates and has been in the business for 35 years. The company has thousands of number plates that are its' own stock and cannot be found anywhere else.

MarkHunt is a specialist in personalised number plates for sale offering first class services that rivals all industry competitors.