Offensive Personalised Number Plates In Sweeden
Reg Plates ArticleChoose a first letter to see two-letter combinations
Offensive Personalised Number Plates In Sweeden
A Swede with a passion for offensive number plates has failed in his cause yet again, after transport authorities denied two of his latest attempts to create 'offensive' personalised plate combinations.
The man, from Varberg in southern Sweden, gained some media attention last year when he attempted to register a personal licence plate reading "3JOH22A".
The Swedish Transport Agency (Transportstyrelsen) rejected the licence plate request on the grounds of it being offensive, the reason for which is made clear when the combination is reflected in a mirror.
The same man has now made two further attempts to change his plate to "8UTT5EX" and "X32TTU8" respectively, but they were also denied, as they too could be considered offensive.
If not immediately obvious, the explanation for rejecting the latter combination is once again made clear when a mirror is introduced to the equation.
"We get a lot of requests and some of them are very subtle. Many see it as a sport to try and get a word through. This one was quite easy to reject," Eva Isaksen from the Swedish Transport Agency told public broadcaster SVT.
The Transport Agency's rules state that a personalised number plate ”may not be designed if it causes offence or harm to anyone else," including allusions to alcohol, drugs, sex, swearwords, religion or criminality.
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.
- FREE TRANSFER SERVICE - your paperwork is handled by our trained team
- OVER 30 YEARS EXPERTISE - long established and trusted company
- DVLA RECOGNISED RESELLER - linked directly from the DVLA website
- TRADE ASSOCIATION MEMBERS - MIRAD and CN Guild members
