I have never had or wanted a vanity plate, but I certainly enjoy seeing the creative letter and digit choices others have made in the name of having fun, flexing, or otherwise sending a message via their federally mandated stamped sheetmetal.
Well, I enjoy some of them. The others, I react to, as I am just as frequently annoyed by vanity plates as I am entertained by them. Not deeply annoyed, mind you, there are much more important concerns in life. But I will roll my eyes, and perhaps exhale sharply with a dismissive pfffft.
In particular, I’m not a fan of smug plates on electric vehicles – by which I mean Teslas. It’s almost always Teslas. It was once a thing for Priuses (which are hybrids, I know), but I can’t recall the last time I saw a Prius suggesting its driver was somehow better than me via license plate. And to be fair, it seems the Tesla owners around my neck of north-Dallas suburbia have chilled out with LOL GAS, NO OIL, LUV ERTH, and the like. I’m sure they’re still out there, but with every third vehicle being a white Model Y where I am, most of the Tesla plates I see are standard luck-of-the-draw affairs. It’s just a regular car, after all.
Vanity plates on enthusiast cars run hot and cold for me, depending entirely on the message of course. A hot car with a HOT CAR plate is a hat on a hat. But if you’re rolling out in a pricey performance machine and your plate is BROKE or NO401K, respect. And while a chuckle was likely not the intention, I do get a one whenever a plate goes harder than the car itself deserves, for ex:
My favorite vanity plates are the thinkers, the ones that take a sec to register but then reward you with the thrill of getting it. Such as:
Judging by those fender flares, I’m betting there’s an angry-eyes grille up front for eff’s sake.
it’s a McConaughey thing
byu/Austin_Native_2 inLICENSEPLATES
McConaug-HEY, I get it! And it’s a Texas plate, of course. That’s quality license-plate humor.
Your turn: What Are The Best And Worst Vanity Plates You’ve Encountered? See you in the comments!
I recently saw a vanity plate on a van at a rest stop along I-20 in Texas that read: DINOBOB
Inside were numerous little stuffed dinosaur toys all over the dash and peering out the windows. It was cute.
One of my wife’s coworkers back in the late 80’s early 90’s had HAUDI on her Audi.
Just removed this from our last RV we recently sold…
LASTONE
The two I remember well from when we first got them in the 80s were
FU TWA on a very nice early Mustang
FRIED on a black shorty van, Cragars, side pipes, etc. I used to wonder how often he got pulled over: Virginia was not the place to do that kinda stuff back then
After I went to see Kansas with Jethro Tull, I got WYWRDSN (my friends started calling me Way Weird ????♂️)
my name is vee, my e63 is VEE63S, my ff is VEERARI, my mini used to be WOWSERS and my viper is VEEPER.
I’m not original, I don’t pretend I am, I couldn’t figure out what to put on my 911 so I went with the tried and true joke B33TL
I actually saw the legendary Bug with the FEATURE plate in Seattle.
The first vanity plate I ever saw was on a Lincoln Continental Mark IV. GDLKNMF. Crude, but clever. The worst was TIHSTAE. He was on the news a few months later when the state took it back.
Years ago I saw an Infinity with “NBEYOND” in a home improvement store parking lot. (It would have been even funnier at Bed Bath & Beyond.)
This was in a state where when you sell or trade in your car, you keep your plate.
Apparently they did one or the other, as I later saw the same plate (at the same home improvement store) on a completely different brand vehicle – it might have been a Chrysler minivan, but I don’t remember – just definitely NOT an Infinity.
It wasn’t nearly as funny on that second one.
Many years ago I worked in the UK and there was someone in the area who drove around in a huge matt black Range Rover with black tinted windows, the license plate of which (not technically a vanity plate, I think) was JAM111N.
Now I have an old MG TD with the plate ZOUNDS – I found you could get away with impolite words if they were 200+ years out of date.
A few years ago I was gifted by the DMV the plate 440 RDR. My brother who had a Mopar restoration business wanted it badly, tried to buy it off me.
Mine is HLF1N0 and it’s been transferred from at least 3 cars now.
My favorite is probably too niche to be really popular, but there’s a drum corps snare player in Nevada with plates LLRRLLR
and I know all those things about the person just from the plate (BD 99-01)
roll off!
Years ago, Car and Driver had a 10 best plates as part of their 10 best awards. The best was: 6UL DV8
I worked with a guy in the mid eighties who had a really crappy C3 Corvette. He had a plate that said something like 2COOL. On of the other guys I worked with had a GF who was a graphics designer and she made up a fake plate that said: IMA NOB. We put it on his car and it took him a couple of weeks to notice the swap.
I had this on my Saab.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/klup1ule4vh88evs9t5fp/JA-37-plate.jpg?rlkey=vn1i9cr36i3uru3xbho4ztwkd&st=7tlmfu95&dl=0
It’s not loading for me … it says, “JA 37”.
Just this morning I was behind “2NDJAG”. I lost track of Jaguar but it was one of the newer models the commoners buy on credit these days.
The all time champion is the Virginia plate with the slogan “Kids First” at the bottom surmounted by the number EATTHE.
My own plate encodes the color, make, and model of my car into 5 letters, a feat I’m rather proud of.
Something like 20% of Virginia cars have vanity plates. I’ve only ever seen one that I found offensive enough to contact the DMV to complain. No, I will not say what it was.
Also in Virginia. Enjoyed the article some years back about the fight the head of a darts federation (?) had with VADMV about his tag: 3INABED. They took it after a complaint, he appealed—went to Richmond with a copy of a darts book showing it was a thing in darts. They said, ‘Ok—but we want a letter from [a darts bigwig] stating this to be true’.
He had written that book, so he wrote the letter, too. And won
I was driving, so I couldn’t get a picture of it.
CNTYBOY
It was a Ford F150. I think he may have missed an R.
“And life ain’t nothing but a funny, funny riddle, thank God I’m a CNTYBOY.”
Maybe he just thought local. County Boy
My neighbor had EVILONE, and the show Arrested Development had “A New Start”, or ANUSTART.
Years ago at the Monterey Historics..the featured marque was Ford. Lot of Cobras, GT350s, Carrol Shelby riding on the trunk of a Mustang convertible! There sits a Black Pantera with the license plate DAVADER..the license plate frame read,
May The Force Blow You Away.
Later another time , another place in a galaxy far far away saw a Lamborghini…plate read: IXLR8
The Oregon plate is awesome. Don’t see how it made it through the censors.
I’ve seen a few. A woman I worked with was dating a urologist whose car had the plate CME2PEZ.
Ironically, at a rest stop in WA, I saw a minivan with PB4WEGO
I Las Vegas, I saw a Porsche with the plate DIDDLE; diddle was a command on the server software I used and I was talking to the programmer and asked why the command had that name. And he said it was “because we’re f*cking with data.”
I lived around the corner from a very tall couple. His plate said SIX 6. Her plate said ONLY512.
Back when Iron Chef was really popular, I bought FE CHEF for my wife as a Christmas present.
Couple of Cali plates:
H8MYKDS (plate frame: “Honk if you hate yours too.”
And a car belonging to a Cali state Appeals Court justice that I knew:
OVRRULD
There is gentleman who allegedly spent his record royalties on a italian sportscar with a 250 GTO plate…
Saw a later Ferrari with V12 PORN,
I remember seeing some version of N0PRNDL or NOPRNDL in Cleveland, OH over 20 years ago.
A neighbor had a Porsche Macan painted chalk and the plate chlkmkn (Chaka Kahn). Very specific age bracket for that joke.
Tell Me Something Good!!
I was once stuck in traffic next to a 370 Z that had been lowered as far as it could possibly go that had a “shocker-hand” bumper sticker and the license plate was RU18YET. I felt like I needed a shower just being in its proximity
Saw a silver Nissan SUV with the plate SLVRAPE. I am sure they meant Silver Ape. but all I could hear in my head was Sean Connery in celebrity Jeopardy. “I’ll take SLVRAPE for 400 Alex.”