Anyone seen any good number plates on cars lately?

[MOCAŠ]

Glasgow Lord Provost G0.

Glasgow also has V 0 at its disposal, having inherited it when Strathclyde Regional Council was abolished in 1996.

Seems Edinburgh set the trend for '0' plates north of the border, when S 0 was specially issued for the Lord Provost's official car after they missed out on S 1 to motoring pioneer Sir John MacDonald at its initial release in 1904. (S 1 remained in the MacDonald family until last September, when it was sold for just under £400k.)

Not to be outdone, Glasgow later secured G 0 after failing to persuade the then-owner, a Mr A Anderson, MD of local car dealership James H Galt Ltd, to part with G 1.

Other Scottish '0' plates include:

HS 0 - East Renfrewshire
RG 0 - Aberdeen
SY 0 - Midlothian
VS 0 - Inverclyde

Incidentally, we have a former Lord Provost of Edinburgh to thank for the fact that the Lord Mayor of London's official car is registered LM 0. Sir James Miller was appointed Lord Mayor of London in 1964, and promptly arranged for the City of London to be issued with a '0' plate of its own. Twelve years earlier, his predecessor Sir Rupert de la Bere (or Bôre) had acquired the plates LM 1 and LM 2 to mark his appointment as Lord Mayor, but chose to retain them upon leaving office.

 

[cammy]

i didn't know that we had V0 as well.
Councils are bloody good to themselves with our money.

 

[bellman]

Caught my eye Thurs. Chrysler 300c K155 WOT

 

[MOCAŠ]

Caught my eye Thurs. Chrysler 300c K155 WOT

Spotted K155 CHE on a Bentley Continental GTC in Marylebone a few weeks ago.

 

[MOCAŠ]

i didn't know that we had V0 as well.
Councils are bloody good to themselves with our money.

Top be fair, in most cases councils either reserved these plates when they were first issued or were subsequently issued with them free of charge for their exclusive use. To that extent, they have not actually squandered public money on acquiring them. You could also argue that many of them would actually have been better off investing in number plates rather than depositing their reserves in shaky Icelandic banks...

However, bearing in mind the prices that the more attractive registrations attract these days, there is mounting public pressure for civic plates to be surrendered for sale (regardless of whether the proceeds would go to the council or to the government via the DVLA's coffers). The other issue is that in some cases it seems the DVLA is effectively leasing plates to councils. Where this is the case, many are now opting to hand the plates back at the end of the term and replacing them with Select registrations.

It's not just the plates, of course. The once de rigueur Rolls-Royce, Daimler or Coleman Milne is now likely to be replaced with a Lexus or Prius hybrid or a value-conscious Skoda Superb when the time comes. Doubtless some would like to go much further, and get rid of the cars – or even the officials themselves – altogether.

Personally speaking, I don't have a problem with mayors/provosts having the use of a distinguished official car with a distinctive plate, provided the council itself is being run efficiently. When the City of Westminster needed to replace their well cared-for but ageing Daimler DS420, they opted for a secondhand Rolls-Royce Silver Seraph and also secured a significant discount on the advertised price. That was around 7 years ago, yet it never fails to look resplendent, while its WE 1 plate - which in a former life was assigned to West Indies High Commission - lends the car an ageless grace.

 

[timwood2000]

BO55 BEN on a 300C Chrysler in the King's Road today

 

[MOCAŠ]

Bearing in mind the recent posts about ST 1 and provosts' registrations, just thought I'd mention that when The Saint TV series was being filmed in the 1960s, the real ST 1 plate was securely attached to the Bentley of solicitor Robert Wotherspoon, who had served as Provost of Inverness from 1955-61. He was reportedly "unconcerned" at its use in the series, suggesting that his permission had not actively been sought. Incidentally, with ST originally being an Inverness-shire combination, one of Mr Wotherspoon's successors, Bill Fraser (provost from 1992-96), currently has SST 500 on his Rolls-Royce.

Mr Wotherspoon died in 1968, and I believe his widow granted permission for ST 1 to be used in 1970s series The Return of The Saint, which also occasionally featured a BMW R100RS motorbike with the just-for-show number ST 2.

By the time of the next TV outing for the Saint in 1989, Mrs Wotherspoon had long-since passed away and ST 1 had been bought by London-based solicitor Mrs S Tosswill for £15k. This time the producers could not obtain permission to use the plate on Simon Dutton's Jensen Interceptor, so instead resorted to using the then-unissued alternative 1 ST by special arrangement with Swansea. Not surprisingly, within a couple of years 1 ST was offered for sale in one of the early DVLA auctions, making a very reasonable £24k.

Mrs Tosswill presumably later had a change of heart (or perhaps a better offer) as ST 1 was back in use on Val Kilmer's Volvo C70 in the 1997 film The Saint. Fast forward to 2005, and ST 1 hit the headlines when it was offered for sale at a cool £150k. Not sure whether there were any takers, but it was still reported to be with Mrs Tosswill as recently as last year, although we know that in the meantime it has migrated from a Mini to a blue 2002 5-door Mercedes-Benz A190 Elegance. Its counterpart, 1 ST, is currently on a blue 2006 Mercedes-Benz S500. Still no sign of ST 2...

 

[tali]

There are several sites out there that use data from the DVLA database to provide basic details.

I tend to use http://www.tyre-shopper.co.uk/ts/search/VRMSearch.aspx, as it allows you to search by just entering the registration and it doesn't care whether they're taxed/insured/sorn'd/etc. It also often returns data that doesn't show up elsewhere, which suggests they are archiving older datasets rather than overwriting them. For instance, it returns my own cars' details whether I search on their original registrations or their private plates.

Word of warning, though: it does also seem to contain some frankly bonkers info. For instance, WV 1 is shown as being on a "5-door Austin Mini 1000 hathcback". It's actually on a Volvo V50...

No sign of 129 DXD, by the way.

I think the wrong info in most cases is the previous car the plate was on.

 

[stumpy1]

2 SLR on guess what at the Dorchester tonight.

 

[cammy]

Caught my eye Thurs. Chrysler 300c K155 WOT

One for you BEL60Y Bentley GT

 

[MOCAŠ]

I think the wrong info in most cases is the previous car the plate was on.

Yes, that's undoubtedly true in many cases. However, the are also some quite bizarre entries on there. For instance, the example I quoted returns a Mini 1000 5-door hatchback; that would be quite some conversion! I've seen many other weird details in search results from that site, so I tend to double-check any results that don't quite ring true.

 

[Monkey]

Just looking back through some of these and found a picture of my old car! What a shock

Incase anybodys interested it was H10T PT on the customised PT Cruiser!.....see it now on page 396

Funnily enough we still own N15E PT on another PT Cruiser

Cheers Monkey

 

[Quincy_W140]

Found this one on eBay... FA57 UFO

Q.

 

[Mike Walker]

00 09 AMG on a C63 AMG at Terminal 5 Heathrow car park last night.

 

[Bobby Dazzler]

SP 51MON on an SL yesterday

 

[eGuru]

HAJ1S on E Class on the M1 this morning. Also saw B45H D on a CLS in Leicester yesterday.

 

[daz]

Welcome to the forum, and congrats on your purchase.

With the number 430 not being offered under the DVLA Select scheme, it seems you have quite a rare combination. A430 CLK (which is also on a CLK) was sold at auction for £1900 in 2002, while the only other two "430 CLK" numbers listed are still on their original cars: a Renault 21 (D...) and Nissan 300ZX (G...) respectively.

Thanks very much for the welcome, and thanks too for the info.
I knew the plate was pretty cool when i bought the 430, but didn't realise the lack of other 430 plates around. Makes me feel even more important hahaha..Mate of mine had seen 430 CLK on a website along with M 230 CLK, both of which were worth a few quid!!
It seems to be the icing on the cake for my bargain buy really..

 

[Alfie]

2 OS on a Bentley on the A281 yesterday afternoon.

 

[bpsorrel]

Many years ago I had a very smart plate on my old Jaguar XJ - JAG 480V which was spaced to read JAG 4 SOV as it was a 4.0 Sovereign! Wish I'd kept both the car and the plate now! Still love the old XJs - IMO not much can rival it's sense of occasion and superb ride!

 

[corned]

a Mini 1000 5-door hatchback; that would be quite some conversion!

Not a new idea though! Radford did this in the 60's to Mini Coopers. Peter Sellers had one IIRC.

Anyway, back on thread...