Vanity plate
The owner of the vehicle pays extra money to have their own choice of numbers or letters, usually portraying a recognizable phrase, slogan, or abbreviation, on their plate.
Sales of vanity plates are often a significant source of revenue for North American provincial and state licensing agencies.
Vanity plates are issued by every U.S. state and the District of Columbia, and every Canadian province except Newfoundland and Labrador.
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%).
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%).
For example, Florida's famous "A55 RGY" license plate (with the standard drawing of an orange in the middle) looks like "ASS ORGY".
[11] 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).
As of 2022[update], Austria, Andorra, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, Iceland, Sweden, South Africa, and Eswatini 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 Jonathan Walter living in Berlin and born in 1966 might opt to register B–JW 1966, providing it is still available, Japan and Brazil have a similar system.
Combinations of letters that result in the names of organisations of the National Socialism such as SS, SA or HJ are banned in Germany.
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.
[12] One barrier his proposal would have to overcome would be that the RDW (Netherlands Vehicle Authority [nl]) links license plates to the actual cars as opposed to their owners.
