Free Notes From the Hard Shoulder by James May Page B

and expensive business. If I remember it rightly, you had to acquire the remains, or

at least the identity, of the complete car bearing the number you wanted. For this reason a lonely crofter living in the wilderness with his AustinSeven reg JM 1 would one day find himself accosted by some terrifying captain of industry in a Rolls-Royce offering him £20,000 for his car. So the old system had a sort of self-regulating mechanism built into it; it cost big money and it had to be something really good to warrant the trouble and expense.
    But the whole number-plate business has been liberated, with the inevitable result that some purveyors of 'distinctive marks' are taking the P155 NOW. I note that 2 XX is up for sale at a staggering £29,950. Unless both your names are Xavier, why would you want this? What does it say about you, other than that you have more MON 3Y than S3 NSE? And why would you want the registration number A740 BMW? If you own a BMW 740, it will already say as much on the bootlid.
    Every T110 MAS, Dl CKS or HAR 13Y wants a personalised registration plate these days, and with catastrophic results. Some of the offerings currently advertised in my pile of car mags are just plain cringeworthy. Does R19 MEO look like 'romeo' to you? It does? May I suggest you stop driving immediately. Does J4 DFS really say 'Jade's'? MYA 35E it does. Do you expect people to be impressed? I'm going to think you simply can't SPE 1L.
    Look, MrP Gent: paying several thousand pounds for P9 ENT is a grave M15 TAK, because a 9 does not look like a G even through the wrong bit of your bifocals. And if you happen to be called Barry, I would

counsel against buying 134 RRY because that's not your name. It's not even a word. And when people find out you spent £9,995 on it they're going to think that YOU 51R are a bit of a TOS 53R.
    Viz comic once famously pointed out that it was much cheaper to change your name to match the number plate you already had than fork out for a personalised one. I've come up with another idea. I'm going to claim that the letters in my registrations are actually clever acronyms. Thus the Bentley's, TOY 102W, means 'Tiller Of Yacht' and the SPF 856R on the Jag advises of a 'Suspicious Puddle in Footwell'.
    On second thoughts, this is a RUB 15H idea. I've also noticed that the Bentley's number looks like it could be meant as a personalised one, so I'll have to write toClassic Nouveau Registrations and request something completely meaningless instead. This is going to be a tough call for an organisation that thinks SA02 RAH says 'Sarah'.
    There is no more tragic testimony to our society's self-obsession than the personalised number plate. If you really think I need to know that your name's Terry, just get a big felt tip and write 'T3rry' on the rear bumper. Unless you're the stationery magnate I once met who had the registration number A4 PAD, no one is going to be impressed.
    Please, please stop it. It's not B1 GOR C13 VER.
    IS IT A CAR? IS IT A BIKE? NO. AND NO.
    Attempts to combine the virtues of the car and the motorcycle in a single machine have rarely been successful. An early example was the so-called motorcycle combination, a German development. Originally, this comprised a normal motorcycle fitted with a wheeled platform on to which a Spandau machine gun was mounted. However, its makers soon discovered that it was impossible to ride the bike and work the gun at the same time.
    Rudimentary bodywork was added to the gun platform and a second German installed with the sole job of firing the weapon, leaving the original rider free to operate the motorcycle's controls and shout 'Himmel!' when a wire, stretched across the road by the French Resistance, sliced his head off. Unwittingly, the sidecar had been born.
    After the war, British bike designers refined the idea, removing the machine gun, installing the wife, and thus creating a means by which the motorcycle licence holder could transport the nuclear family,