NUMBER PLATE FACTS:The UK’s most expensive number plate to date is the F1 registration number purchased by a British businessman for £440,625 in 2008, though that’s just small change compared to the £7m spent by Abu Dhabi-based Saeed Khouri on the 1 number plate – officially the largest sum of money ever spent on a registration number.
Eric Morecambes Cherished Number Rescued!
Eric Morecambe’s 1971 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow has been spared from the scrapheap at the last minute.
Peter Yates, who runs a wedding car firm in Morecambe, spotted the car in a Shrewsbury junkyard just 24 hours before it was due to be dismantled.
He said finding the car – which had the number plate EM100 when Morecambe owned it – was a ‘miracle’.
The car was owned by the comic from 1971 and 1974 – as shown by the original order note – and Yates says it still smells of cigar smoke.
How the car came to be in a scrapheap is unknown. Seven years ago the car, including the personalised number plate, sold for £36,000 at auction.
Since their humble begining in 1903, cherished numbers have continued to increase in popularity often adding the finishing touch to our prized posessions and very often prove to be a valuable investment.
Since the dvla introduced the bsau145d legislation it has been increasingly difficult for motorists to obtain number plates with anything other than legal spacing.
There is however another line of argument for the defence of the serial mis spacer. They say that a number plate that has been altered to make a word or a name is much more memorable in the event of an incident.
They also argue that the dvla blatantly auction registration numbers that would be virtually worthless without mis spacing.