007 Number Plate Fan Snaps Up Personalised Plates

A MINISTER obsessed by James Bond and motors had his prayers answered after snapping up 007 plates.

Lyall Rennie, 67, was delighted to stumble across the spy legend’s number and word ‘rev’ as he trawled the DVLA’s database.

So the Kirk cleric splurged £700 for his Audi reg and £400 on his Honda’s.

Rev Rennie said: “The salesman was a Bond fan as well. He suggested a personalised number plate and we looked on the DVLA site.

“The 007 jumped out. I thought it was going to cost a fortune but it was very reasonable.”

The churchman, who covers the area around Dunnet, Caithness had been a fan of the Licence to Kill agent since Sean Connery’s debut in Dr No in 1962.

He has all 24 Bond movies on DVD at home with 2012 blockbuster Skyfall being his favourite.

And he’s delighted Daniel Craig has announced he’ll star as the spy in another flick.

He said: “Craig is my favourite Bond — after that it’s Sean. It’s great Daniel is doing another one. It’s the news everyone has been waiting for.”

The former oil exec — ordained in 2014 — also sees himself as an all-action character with a string of daredevil charity fundraisers.

He completed a zipslide across the River Wick, abseiled down historic Dunrobin Castle in Sutherland and was plucked from the North Sea by helicopter.

He dreams of abseiling down the Forth Bridge.

Wife Isabel, 65, said: “When he was doing the zipslide he had the number 07. Someone stuck another 0 on it.

“It was appropriate — he thinks he’s James Bond.”

The couple, who have a grown-up son and daughter, have had a succession of sports cars but never Bond’s iconic Aston Martin.

The reverend was snapped last month with Prince Charles when he was on holiday at the Castle of Mey, the former home of his gran, the late Queen Mother.

We love our MyPlates here at EFTM and now there’s a huge new range of custom colour and style options you can choose from to “show your colours” on your car too.

The “Carbon Fibre” look plates now come in three new colours, Red, Blue and Green to help you match your style and colour to your car.

How close a series of letters or numbers are to a real name of word: if the match quality is high (and the numbers and letters are very convincing in making a popular word), the value of the registration plate will be higher. This means that a match like 5IMON, for the name Simon, will be worth a lot more than a more obscure set of letters and numbers that are not as convincing a match, such as S17 MMM for the name Sam.

The style of the plate: this means establishing if it is a new-style plate, an older-style format or if it is dateless or Irish, for instance. Other options are that it is a prefix-style plate or a suffix-style plate. New-style number plates, which have been produced since 2001, tend to be the least valuable because they are a bit less appealing to some collectors, plus the rule about not having plates that are newer than your car can also come into play, putting people off from buying a newer-style plate for their older car. Prefix-style number plates, which were in production between 1983 and 2001 can be more popular as more vehicles are entitled to have those licence numbers, and they may have fewer characters in total. Suffix-style plates, issued from 1963 to 1983 are relatively rare, which means they can attract higher prices than prefix-style plates and newer designs. Dateless number plates, also known as cherished number plates, were produced between 1903 and 1963 and are nearly always the most valuable number plate configurations; they have fewer digits and their dateless nature means that people can hide the age of their car. Irish number plates are similar to dateless number plates, especially because they don’t have a year identifier. They also tend to be cheaper than other types of vehicle registration plates.

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