Virginia takes top prize in Vanity Lisence Plates...

[Che Guava]

In a nation of personalized license plates, Virginia rates URSOVAIN

You, too, New Hampshire, Illinois, Nevada and Montana.

A state-by-state survey of the popularity of vanity license plates has found that car and truck owners in Virginia are the vainest of them all.

Out of the 9.3 million personalized plates on the roads of America, about one in 10 are in Virginia, according to rankings provided to The Associated Press by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators.

That's 16 per cent of the plates issued by Virginia. New Hampshire came in second with nearly 14 per cent. Illinois had about 13.4 per cent, but that amounted to nearly 1.3 million plates, the most of any state.

"If you've got 9.3 million people across the U.S. sporting vanity plates, you've got a cultural phenomenon," AAMVA spokesman Jason King said.

Texas had the fewest, with only about a half per cent of drivers personalizing their plates.

Kathy Carmichael drives around with the plate COFENUT, although she is down from eight to 10 cups of java a day to just three.

"It's a personality thing," said Carmichael, 58, a real state agent in Mechanicsville. "You get to know something about the person in front of you or who passes you."

Stefan Lonce calls it "minimalist poetry in motion" - telling a story in eight or fewer characters.

Lonce - author of the upcoming book "LCNS2ROM-License to Roam: Vanity Plates and the Stories they Tell" - worked with AAMVA to survey vehicle licensing agencies in each state.

"I think a lot of people have stories to tell and they really want pieces of those stories out there," said Lonce, who admits he initially thought it was silly for people to spend extra money to personalize their license plates.

Ion Bogdan Vasi, an assistant sociology professor at Columbia University, calls people who personalize their plates "the narcissistic-materialist poets of the iGeneration."

"Most people buy personalized plates simply because they want to tell the world they are special," Vasi said in an e-mail. "They wrote an ode to themselves and they want to share it with everybody on the highway."

Some plates are cryptic, like Brittany Diaz' EN PWANT. It's a reminder of the summer when she studied ballet in New York and her French teacher pronounced the "en pointe" style of dance as "en pwant."

"Most ballerinas get it, and those who don't dance I figured would be entertained because pwant is just a funny thing to say," said Diaz, 17, of Midlothian.

Others are personal, like those of Ally and Rudy Masry of Briarcliff Manor, N.Y. She donated a kidney to her husband in 2003, so her car has the tag DONOR and his reads DONEE.

Some offer quirky takes on professions, like EYEMAN and 2THDR. BYTE1 reflects the computer science degree held by Vonn Campbell of Greenville, S.C., but he also chose it "to provide a somewhat abrasive message to those individuals who follow too closely."

But why does Virginia have so many personalized plates?

"It's only $10. You can do it online with little effort. You can get a new one every month if you wanted to," said Benjamin Mace, a Virginia Beach Web designer who started CoolPl8z.com, where people post pictures of their vanity plates.

However, some other states are just as cheap. And Illinois has the largest total even though it charges $78 per year

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I don't know how many here are actually car owners, but has anyone ever gotten a vanity plate?

 

[The Yankee]

No. But I don't have a license plate, period. And if I did, I'm sure anything I could come up with would either be taken or too long to fit. Or too profane.

 

[Godwynn]

I don't know how many here are actually car owners, but has anyone ever gotten a vanity plate?

I have one!

 

[Che Guava]

I have one!

I guess it wouldn't be a good idea to give it out here, but could you tell us what it's about?

EDIT: Good lord, did you really pay $78 for it too?!

 

[The Yankee]

I have one!

FREMRKT? MILTONF?

The message you have entered is too short.

 

[Godwynn]

I guess it wouldn't be a good idea to give it out here, but could you tell us what it's about?

It's named after my second favorite basketball player. My favorite one was taken. Some other Illinois bumhole took it.

 

[Godwynn]

FREMRKT?

No, but thats a good one.

*Jots it down*

 

[skadistic]

78$ sounds like what a regular tag here costs. I never got vanity tags but I have gotten specialty tags.

 

[Mise]

They cost thousands of pounds in the UK. Very, very few people have them.

In fact, for most people, it's more of a vanity feature that our number plates have the (half) year in which the car was bought on them, so that everyone can see that a car with "57" in the plate was bought some time between September 2007 and March 2008 (i.e. it's brand new, so the owner would want to show that off...).

 

[Irish Caesar]

This surprises me.

It certainly seems like a lot more than 14% of the New Hampshire plates I see are vanity plates.

I do not have one, and I kinda prefer that; I prefer to remain as anonymous as possible on the road... just in case.

 

[Red Door]

This does not surprise me. Vanity plates are everywhere here.

 

[emzie]

I was going to do Hogwrts, but it was taken

 

[Aegis]

I live in Virginia, and I have a vanity plate. =o)

 

[ohcrapitsnico]

That surprises me about how TX has the least vanity plates because I see them daily almost. I already had an idea about Virginia I know someone who won a prize for best vanity plate. I forgot how it was spelled but it said wine and roses essentially.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I had one about 20 years ago: BORODINO

People kept asking me if that was my last name.

 

[Mirc]

What are vanity plates?

*state of total confusion*

 

[Red Door]

What are vanity plates?

*state of total confusion*

License Plates with custom messages, like:

RedDoor instead of the standard 3 Letters - 4 Numbers

 

[Mirc]

License Plates with custom messages, like:

RedDoor instead of the standard 3 Letters - 4 Numbers

Aha, I finally understand what this thread is about.

Oh, it's not surprising I didn't know what they were - since here they are illegal. Your license plate must be comprised of 2 letters (corresponding to the "region" - only one of the 40 of them has solely 1 letter), 2 numbers and 3 letters at the end.

I do remember seeing such things on cars when I was in the US. I think they add a very nice touch.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Best personalized plate of all time?

DNO7B WI mounted backwards and upside down -> IM BLOND. Autoweek has a photo of it in this week's issue.

 

[Newbunkle]

This is disappointing news in a way. I just thought that this guy was crazily obsessive when he got a vanity plate named for his stupid Sonic the Hedgehog recolour. Now I find out that everyone does it just doesn't have the same impact.

To see what his car is named after, open this:

Spoiler :