Why the 61 registration plate makes no sense at all

THE centenary-edition Ford Fiesta, the revamped Renault Twingo, the more generously equipped SEAT Leon and a Nissan Micra with a supercharger. What do all these new cars have in common?



Nope, you're wrong. They're all being launched just in time to tie in with the launch of the 61-registration plate.



Back in ye olden days of say, 10 or 15 years ago, new registration plates used to be a big deal. I distinctly recall reading through special supplements made by papers like The Champion listing all the shiny cars you could buy on, say, an ‘R' registration plate. Now of course the supplements are long gone because - let's face it - nobody cares.



Why would you, when the current registration plates make no sense at all?



You'd be forgiven for thinking you'd need a maths degree to understand it. The new prefix, for instance, is 61, which marks out that your new motor's been registered in the second half of 2011, although it's too complicated to explain why. The two letters that precede it, I know because I don't get out more, signify where in the country you bought it - but not in any way Joe Public is going to understand - and the three at the end you make up yourself. Still following?



It's completely and utterly unsurprising that precisely nobody gets worked up about having the latest registration plates anymore, because nobody I know actually understands them. Numberplates, I've reckoned for years, need as much as a revamp as some of the cars they'll be destined to appear on.



Why not, for instance, replace the completely meaningless local lettering with, say, postcodes? People understand postcodes and have better chance of being able to tell the police, for instance, that an L39-registered car is from the Ormskirk area. It'd also have the added benefit of giving visiting motorists a clue as to what town they're in (unless, like me, you run on Pub Satnav).



And scrap the six-month thing, for Pete's sake. If you lose the smug factor after six months, why bother? Change it to say, just ‘12' for next year's new models, and stick with it for the whole 12 months. Buying a new car will regain its cachet in an instant.



Finally, the last scramble of numbers should just be something dull and chronological; for instance, if you were the 1,001st person to buy a car in the PR8 area, then yours should be 1001. It's boring but at least people will remember it, which is what you'd want if your 12-registered C-Class gets stolen in a resumption of last week's riots. It's also at least slightly more sensible than the surreal system currently used for new cars.



Unless anyone's got any better ideas...

Celebrate your Scottishness with a numberplate. Or not

IT is, in case you haven't been watching the news, a great time to be Scottish.

Sean Connery, the Scottish Roger Moore, once said he'd live to see his homeland regain its independence in his lifetime and lots of us down here laughed and gingerly pointed out that, of course, he lives in LA. But now the SNP have won their majority north of the border and it'd be silly to bet against the prospect of them holding their long-promised referendum on the subject. James Bond himself could yet live to see the day when motorists get past Carlisle and are asked to show their passports at Border Control.

Naturally, the DVLA's chosen to celebrate by offering all true Scots what they've always wanted; a personalised numberplate which spells out WA11 ACE which - provided you don't live in Wigan with a dog called Gromit - is supposed to be the ultimate expression of Cool Caledonia for your car. Only it isn't. It's a vanity numberplate which will make you look like a berk.

Obviously it's meant to read out “Wallace” but it doesn't; what it actually says is “Wa Eleven Ace”, and it's the same story with all personalised plates in this country. One of my own favourites was a Toyota Land Cruiser proudly wearing “G1 LTY” upon its plates, which if you're a gangland crook presumably means “guilty” but is completely unintelligible to anyone else.

I have a set I use at classic car shows, but they're only a £15 bodge job only to stop Internet saddos from cloning my car details if photos of my pride and joy make it into cyberspace. To stump up silly prices for the real, road legal deal - and in the case of WA11 ACE you'll get stung for £2,000 by chaps in Swansea - just shows you have more money than sense.

You can, for instance, pay £10,000 to have 15 0 on your numberplate, but to do that you'd have to dismiss a) buying a brand new Fiesta, b) buying any number of classic cars which would impress the ladies far more or c) giving a substantial amount of cash you clearly don't need to charity. American vanity plates are fine - you can get anything you like for $45, as long as nobody else has it - but in Britain it's a bonkers scheme. It is motoring merchandise gone mad.

To be able to justify having WA11 ACE on your car you would have to be not only a diehard Scot but obscenely rich and so cast-iron cool that a personalised plate won't damage your street cred.

Or Sean Connery.