BBC News - Why do people still buy personalised number plates?
Last year the UK's Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency raised £67m from the sale of personalised number plates. But why do people still buy them?
Lord Alan Sugar has one: AMS 1. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge drove away from their wedding with one that read JU5T WED and broadcaster Chris Evans has several.
But it's not only the rich and famous who buy personalised number plates. Despite the recent economic downturn, they are still big business.
Personalised plates are regularly used in films and television series to hint that a character is a braggart or an egomaniac or just a bit desperate for attention.
In the TV series The Persuaders, international playboy Brett Sinclair, 15th Earl of Marnock, drove an Aston Martin DBS with the number plate BS 1. In the 1964 Bond film Goldfinger, the villain had AU 1 on his 1937 Rolls Royce Phantom III Sedanca de Ville.
For the thousands of drivers who actually have personalised number plates, they are regarded as a statement of individuality or an investment. To many of the vast majority that don't have one they're an ostentatious waste of cash.
Retired businessman Robert Harverson, from Surrey, paid almost £250,000 for the registration 1 RH in November 2008. He went to the auction in Yorkshire intending to spend between £100,000 and £150,000 but recalls that - once there - he thought: "It's my initials, there's only one, so I've got to keep bidding."
He admits it is a kind of statement but no different to spending a lot on a car or boat.
"I was brought up in a one-bed flat with five of us, hand to mouth. I've worked hard in life so I can buy what I want."
But Harverson's attitude to the plate has shifted slightly. "I don't have any regrets in life but I wouldn't buy it again. In the last five to six years my mindset has changed. I would sell it if the price was right."
Harverson currently owns six private plates and says when he first started buying them they represented good value. "They were an investment, like property, 30 years ago. You'd buy sought-after ones for a few hundred pounds. But in the last 10 years it's become a fad."
Earlier this year, Steve Holden drove 219 miles from his bed and breakfast in Yarm, north-east England, to Oxford to buy HO11 DEN. He went to the auction with a £3,000 mental limit but ended up spending £7,400 to get his hands on the plate. He already owned four others.
"I would kick myself if I let it go and saw it on someone else's car," he says. "Once you've got one, you want to buy better ones. You do get noticed quite a bit but I don't buy them to be noticed. I like them and it's a good investment."
Heather Logan and her husband Gordon own seven, including 33 GL and 33 HL. After hearing GO12 DON was being auctioned in Leeds, they made the trip from their Cleveland home in March. Mrs Logan bought the plate as a birthday present for her husband, paying £8,400. "We think of them as an investment," she says.
"If there's something you want in life, and you can afford it, then why not go out and buy it."
The BBC used freedom of information laws to obtain the 10 most expensive registration plates sold directly by the DVLA, although other plates have reportedly changed hands for larger sums privately.
Topping the DVLA list is 1 D, which was bought for £352,000 in March 2009 by a London-based Lebanese businessman who wanted a birthday present for his wife.
Motoring journalist Quentin Willson says plates fall into two distinct groups. "The number plate market is polarised between the cheesiest, chosen by people with the literary sensibilities of vampire bats, and those that look really quite good, hide the age of your car and can look really quite classic."
"It really is about being visually pleasing. They are great fun but much abused. It seems to have caught the nation's psyche. For a motoring-obsessed nation they are a suburban trinket. A number plate is a form of automotive jewellery. You can either change your car or change your number plate, and changing your number plate is cheaper."