R-ego Plates
The Age
Tuesday August 8, 2000
GOOD taste on the plate is the business of the staff at VicRoads' registration section. They're the state's first and last line of defence against lewd, provocative, anatomical and ambiguous personalised number plates.
Tony Caso is one of the staff who read drivers' requests frontwards, backwards, phonetically and contextually in an effort to uncover the cryptically mischievous.
Daily, they play an alpha-numeric mind game with the lascivious, the aggressive and the anarchic set on making their plates sizzle.
"It takes a little bit of time to get used to it but when your eye gets into it, you know exactly what's going on," Caso says.
"The other things you've got to look out for are foreign words."
They've rejected fart in Italian and recalled mother*@#*$# in Mandarin after a complaint from the public.
`HE (Mr Mother*@#*$#) knew he was trying it on," Caso says. ``He got away with it for a little while and then the game was up and he was quite happy to hand it back."
Customised plates were first introduced in Victoria in 1985 and there are up to 60,000 on the VicRoads database.
Vehicle registration manager Bruce Chipperfield says about 200 new applications are lodged each week. The plates, which range in price from $99 to $395, depending on the mix of colors and characters on offer, raise about $3 million a year.
Chippefield says they don't like to curtail selfexpression and are really only interested in weeding out the obviously offensive or inappropriate. Bumper ideas that have been rejected include BLOJOB, ARUWET, ORGASM, SUSIDE, KCUF, EMKCUF, MEKCUF and PHUKU.
But PECKER, PUSSY, KIKARS, KIKASS, TOPLIS, TART and IVPLAY have passed their driving test.``That shows we are not trying to be wowsers," Chipperfield says. ``I mean, we are not setting ourselves up to be wowserish; we allow a lot more than probably others would."
As well as ferreting out the rude and the nasty, registration staff apply an unwritten context test to applications for plates.
Chippefield cites one persistent applicant whose request for JESUS on a plate has been knocked back several times. ``We say: `This is state property and there are other people in the community who wouldn't think it appropriate to have a number plate with that on it'."
Interestingly, BJASUS was approved and, we're told, the plates are now whizzing about Melbourne bolted to a Merc.
When some Vietnam veterans complained about MIAK47 on an Asian man's car because the AK47 rifle had slain mates, the plates were recalled. After he'd appealed, another Vietnam vet got police approval to put PIGS on his plates, as it was a reference to his former battalion.
Earlier this year, a Sydney man was refused the number plate WOGBOX for his Valiant because the BOX, not the WOG, was deemed offensive. Our interstate cousins have also rejected ENIS for a Pplater, FARQ and MAD69R. But Sydney is reported to have approved LICKIT for an icecream van, PIGBUM for a smallgoods truck and STIFF for a dominatrix's hearse.
Chipperfield agrees it can be tricky when innocent connections come into play but VicRoads tends to err on the side of approval. Words like wog and bugger, once considered offensive are no longer so.
``One could argue that community tastes have moved on and bugger is not as offensive as once it was," Chipperfield says.
``We'd probably allow it now but because we've knocked it back so many times in the past, we continue to knock it back on the basis that it wouldn't be fair to give it to someone just at the time we change our policy. It's a bit of a dilemma when other people have been knocked back."
And wog? ``Wog has been knocked back but there's a WOGJET out there. SEX has been issued, too." VicRoads changed the custom plate rules 12 months ago to allow people to buy them without necessarily assigning them to a vehicle. According to Chipperfield and Caso, people buy them for birthdays, to add prestige to already prestigious cars, as collectors' items, as advertisements, for laughs and for dreams.
``At Christmas time, you get SANTA and HOHOHO," Caso says. ``We've had HISCAR, HERCAR, HISTOY, HERTOY, ILUVU, MYLUV, TIAMO and SAGAPO.
``In the early days of custom plates, the most popular names were all purchased and many were put aside for kids, some as young as three or four, to have when they turned 18."
CHIPPY, BRICKY and POOMAN have been snapped up, presumably by those in the carpentry, bricklaying and plumbing trades. Even more prominent among custom plate enthusiasts are those wanting to promote their car as faster or flasher than the next.
XLER8, MYMNRO, FASTEH and SIKASS are just some of the plates out there. HSV and WRX plates are also highly sought after. Drivers of luxury cars like to use snazzy plates to set their vehicles apart - such as IXII plates on a Porsche 911 and white on black XXXXXX plates on a black Porsche.
Chipperfield adds: ``A lot of people buy BMW plates even though they don't have a BMW because they think, `when I eventually buy my BMW, I'm going to have the plate for it'."
Shannons auction manager Doug WillersdorfGreene says early, original numeralonly plates are the ones with the most commercial value.
``Plates with the lone digits 1, 2 and 3 are, of course, the prize," WillersdorfGreene says. ``Essentially the further away from the number 1, the less valuable they become."
Shannons has sold plates 14, 15 and 16 for $74,000, $76,000 and $75,000 respectively. ``Numeric plates are a quantifiable (investment) item like shares," WillersdorfGreene says, adding that original enamel plates will normally command higher prices than reproductions.
Plates with the number 8 on them are considered lucky by the Chinese community and can command large sale prices, too. In Victoria, Shannons has sold the number 8 for $98,000, the number 88 for $98,000 and the number 288 for $27,000.
Victoria's most valuable plates, the number 1 plates, are owned by a wellknown Melbourne businessman and said to be attached to his Porsche.
Webthemed plates are the latest fad and are commanding high resale prices from hitech executives.
WEBWIZ, a $395 NSWregistered plate, was recently advertised for resale. The asking price? A cool $50,000, or more.
© 2000 The Age