Vanity plate

A vanity plate in Amarillo, Texas, referencing the Star Wars character Chewbacca

Vanity plates are issued by every U.S. state and the District of Columbia, and every Canadian province except Newfoundland and Labrador.[1]

In 2007, the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA) and Stefan Lonce, author of License to Roam: Vanity License Plates and the Stories They Tell, conducted North America's first state by state and province by province survey of vanity plates, revealing that there are 9.7 million vehicles with personalized vanity license plates. The survey ranked jurisdictions by "vanity plate penetration rate", which is the percentage of registered motor vehicles that are vanitized. Virginia has the highest U.S. vanity plate penetration rate (16.19%), followed by New Hampshire (13.99%), Illinois (13.41%), Nevada (12.73%), Montana (9.8%), Maine (9.7%), Connecticut (8.14%), New Jersey (6.8%), North Dakota (6.5%) and Vermont (6.1%). Texas had the lowest vanity plate penetration rate (0.5%).[2] Virginia's high rate of vanity plates, in particular, was attributed to the low cost per annum compared to a standard plate: the state charges $10 more for vanity plates than for state-issued plates, compared to $50 more in Maryland and $100 more in Washington, D.C..[3] According to the Federal Highway Administration, in 2005 there were 242,991,747 privately owned and commercial registered automobiles, trucks, and motorcycles in the U.S., and 3.83% of eligible U.S. vehicles have vanity plates.

Ontario had the highest Canadian vanity plate penetration rate (4.59%), followed by Saskatchewan (2.69%), Manitoba (1.96%), the Yukon (1.79%), and the Northwest Territories (1.75%). British Columbia had the lowest vanity plate penetration rate (0.59%) among those provinces that issue vanity plates. According to Statistics Canada, in 2006 there were 14,980,046 registered motor vehicles (excluding buses, trailers, and off-road, farm and construction vehicles) in the provinces and territories that issue vanity plates, and 2.94% of eligible Canadian vehicles have vanity plates.

Massachusetts vanity plate on a parked motorcycle in Boston

In some states and provinces, optional plates can also be vanity plates and are a choice of motorists who want a more distinctive personalized 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 some states, a motorist may also check the availability of a desired combination online. In New Jersey, which uses six alphanumeric characters on its plates, drivers can order vanity plates with seven characters.

All U.S. states and Canadian provinces that issue vanity plates have a "blue list" of vanity plates that contains banned words, phrases, or letter/number combinations. The U.S. state of Florida, for example, has banned such plates as "PIMPALA", while the state of New York bans any plates with the letters "FDNY", "NYPD", or "GOD", among others.[4] 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, as some U.S. motorists have successfully sued their state governments on that issue under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.[5] The "blue list" is not definitive; in general, the agent processing an application for a vanity plate can reject a plate if it is deemed offensive, even if the phrase does not match a banned word exactly. State DMVs have received complaints about offensive vanity plates.[6] In this case, the DMV can revoke a plate if it is deemed offensive, even if it had been previously approved.[7] The "blue list" may be limited to genuine vanity plates, not covering computer-generated accidents. For example, Florida's famous "A55 RGY" license plate (with the standard drawing of an orange in the middle) looks like "ASS ORGY".[8] The state of Georgia banned the word "covfefe", a misspelling of the word "coverage" that was coined by U.S. President Donald Trump on his Twitter to its customized plates.[9]

Self-referencing vanity plate in Michigan

In some cases, a plate that has already been issued can be recalled and stripped from the vehicle's owner if the plate's message is found to be in violation after it has been issued.

In the United Kingdom, number plates are issued by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA). They do not approve personalized (UK spelling "personalised") registrations (often also called private number plates and cherished number plates in the UK) if they contain words which are offensive in any widely used language. One registration to slip the net was PEN 15. The DVLA however lately have released more and more previously banned combinations such as SEX and DAM. UK plates have to match certain very strict letter/number combinations: see vehicle registration plates of the United Kingdom.

Registrations can be sold, or transferred from one vehicle to another, with some restrictions. Registrations can also be held on a retention document issued by the DVLA, this is perfect for dealers or if the owner is in between vehicles. The trade of number plates was started by private dealers, entrepreneurs who saw an opportunity to sell something in demand. Originally the only vanity plates allowed to be transferred were ordinary registrations that had been transferred. The DVLA began selling personalized registrations unrelated to the registration districts in 1989. More than 4.2 million registrations were sold during the first 25 years of this initiative, raising over £2 billion for the UK Treasury.[10]

There is some additional flexibility available by using numbers that resemble letters (e.g., S for 5), or by using large black, yellow or white headed screws to fix the plate to the car to fill in or create a gap (e.g. in the middle of 'H' to make it look like two 1s or Is). However, the font style, size and spacing is mandated by law, making the practice illegal. The font that is used on all new number plates is called Charles Wright 2001, and was first introduced in September 2001 to coincide with the DVLA release of new style DVLA number plates.

Some plates acquire significance only because of particular owners. For example, "COM 1C" was formerly owned by the comedian Jimmy Tarbuck, magician Paul Daniels had "MAG 1C", the 1967 plate "BEL 12E" is owned by the Belize High Commission, and "1 AFG" is owned by the Afghan embassy. Some personalised/private number plates/registrations have been investments compared to antiques and works of art. The first registration ever issued in the UK was "A 1". Over the years the value has increased and now thought to be worth around £1,000,000. All single letter single number and single number single letter combinations seem to be the best investments.

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. Dealers have trade associations and governing bodies with codes of practice.

A custom plate from Victoria, Australia

A custom plate from Shemiran, Tehran, Iran which reads 66Q666/Iran 11 (Persian: ۶۶۶ق۶۶/ایران ۱۱)

Latvian vanity plate

Finnish vanity plate (Sari, Finnish female name)

In Australia the various states offer personalised plate schemes, with some states having a yearly fee to maintain the cherished number. In the Australian states of Victoria and Queensland the proceeds from the sale of custom plates and personalised plates go towards road safety activities.

As of 2017, Austria, Andorra, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, Iceland, Sweden, South Africa, Eswatini and Turkey also allow such license plates.

German car registration law does not allow license plates such as these, but it is possible to select the two letters after the district designation and up to four numbers thereafter for a small fee. It is common in Germany for car owners to register license plates with their initials and a year or number of significance to them. For example, a man by the name of Jimmy Wales living in Berlin and born in 1966 might opt to register B–JW 1966, providing it is still available.

On November 19, 2007, Dutch Member of Parliament Paul de Krom proposed that vanity plates be introduced in the Netherlands as well, after having seen them while visiting the United States.[11] One barrier his proposal would have to overcome would be that the RDW (the Dutch vehicle registration authority) links license plates to the actual cars as opposed to their owners. Additionally, vowels are not allowed on Dutch license plates specifically because otherwise license plates could (unintentionally) spell a word, so allowing vanity plates would be a strange match with current law.

In Poland, there is an option to buy an individual number plate for an extra charge. The plate looks the same as an ordinary one, there is a letter showing the country district, then one number and then up to five letters of free choice.

In the United Arab Emirates, regular number plates consist of five digits and one optional character (depending on the emirate). So-called "distinguished plates" have a special combination of digits (12345, 55555, etc.) or less than five digits and are sold at public auctions, the profit of which is used for charities.[12] Very low numbers fetch very high prices, the record being the number one plate from Abu Dhabi, sold for 52.2 million Dirhams (US$14 million ).[13] In Dubai, plate number one (without additional letter) is registered to the car of Sheikh Mohammed, ruler of Dubai.

On June 15, 2017, it became possible to apply for a personalised license plate in Norway.[14] The person registering the plate must complete an online application and pay a fee of 9000 Norwegian kroner (about US$1058). If the license plate is considered appropriate and the application is approved by an employee, the applicant will have to pay the fee within a certain time limit. If the fee is not paid, the application is denied and the sign goes back into the pool and can be reserved by others. The service was reportedly so popular that the government's Public Roads website crashed within minutes of launch.[15]

A Czech request plate. Because the letter O is prohibited, the digit 0 is used instead. It also fulfills the requirement to use at least one digit.

The Czech Republic has allowed request plates since January 2017.[16] While standard plates for automobiles, trucks, buses or trailers have 7 characters (grouped 3+4), request plates have 8 characters (3+5). For motorcycles, a standard plate has 6 characters (2+4), a request plate 7 characters (2+5). The whole string has to contain at least one digit. Plates must not contain vulgar or defamatory expressions nor names of authority offices. As with the standard plates, they cannot contain the letters G, O, Q, or W. A single plate costs a CZK 5000 charge, the whole pair CZK 10000 charge, preliminary reservation CZK 500 up to 3 months. When the plate is lost or stolen, a duplicate cannot be emitted.

• Bumper Stumpers, a game show revolving around the vanity plate concept
• Vanity domain