NUMBERPLATES

Although the original idea before building the car was to register it as new, a more suitable plate beckoned after I saw Parallels car with the 'D14BLC' registration. Cunningly (but illegal) placed numberplate bolts helped make the 4 look like an 'A' and the C look like an 'O'. Highly appropiate I'd say. With my car, even though running the car around on a brand new registration would be nice, after a year or so it wouldn't have the same impact so I checked out the DVLA website, found at www.dvla-som.co.uk

After a fair bit of searching for something suitable, nothing came up in the lookalike 'LAMBO' format so I checked everything with the last 3 letters using 'BLC' and 'BLO'. Obviously, 'D14BLO' had been taken (probably bought for £500 and sold for about £10K) and Parallel had got their mits on 'D14BLC' but I did find 'D13BLO'. I had a bit of a play around and thought that with a bit of fettling in the '3' area I could make it look a little like a lower case 'a'. OK, not ideal, but for the £500 they were asking, which includes VAT and the £80 retention fee, I felt I couldn't do much better. Below is a picture of the original PhotoShop-modified image that I did, and was what I sent to The Image Works.

I decided that I should get the registration as I doubt there would be anything more suitable under the £2K mark. I handed over the £499 to DVLA and recieved my Certificate of Entitlement some 3 days later. I now needed to find a manufacturer who could make the plates for me, albeit with the modified '3'. I had used a Company called The Image Works before for various modified plates (show use only, of course) and had always been happy with the results. They will literally work from an image you supply them, and copy it exactly if needed. The image I had wasn't nearly a high enough quality to work from but it gave the Image Works an idea of what I wanted, so they worked out exactly what I needed their end. Because the modified 3 would undoubtably attract attention from plod I thought it wise to at least have a legal size plate and font. Below is a picture of the final plates as I received them. Incidentally, if anyone would like this registration I am open to offers...

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