Your second most important purchase

Owning a car is an essential component for those of us who live in the beautiful but distant and vast west Highlands.

Without it our lives would come to a standstill: how would we ever get things done? How would we get to work, take the children to school, do the weekly shop or visit friends?

It can be no surprise then that buying a motor car is, for most people, the second most important purchase they will make, next to purchasing their house.

The number plate has been around for many years. The first country to introduce it was France in 1893, but cars grew ever more popular in the UK.

The British government decided to take steps to regulate vehicles on the nation’s roads.

Number plates would also be useful in the event of an accident or crime, making it easier to track down the owner of the vehicle and take appropriate action.

Eventually, the UK also adopted the number plate using index marks of one or two letters. Today’s approach features an ‘age identifier’ in the middle of plate and has been in force since September 2001.

The first two letters represent the ‘local memory tag’ indicating where the vehicle was registered. The third and fourth digits are known as the ‘age identifier’ and change every six months – in March and September. The digits in March will always be the same as the last two digits of the current year.

For example, a car registered in London from March this year would have the digits LA17. In September, 50 is added to this number, so if the same car was registered in September 2017 the number plate would be LA67.

The final three letters are chosen at random, generated by a computer, but are carefully checked to ensure no offensive results are created! Personalised registration plate demand boomed in Britain last year: a whopping 374,968 private personalised plates were sold and registered in the UK over the course of last year – an increase of 12 per cent over 12 months.

What is believed to be the world’s most expensive personalised number plate went on sale this year, when British automotive designer, Afzal Kahn, put his prized F1 plate on sale in Britain on Plates4Less. The plate was listed at £12,250,270.83, which increased to £14,700,405 once compulsory government charges were added.

Kahn purchased the F1 registration plate for £440,000 in 2008, which set a UK record for the most expensive plate sold at auction. It resided on his Bugatti Veyron.

The DVLA estimates more than £2 billion has been raised for the Treasury at its specialised number plate auctions over the past 25 years.

Here are the next five most expensive plates sold in the UK:

2. 25 O – £518,480

The most expensive plate in the UK was purchased by a classic car dealer. Selling for just over half a million pounds in 2014, it was the perfect plate to be fitted to his Ferrari 250 GT SWB, worth a staggering £10 million.

3. X 1 – £502,500

The X1 was bought by a private buyer in 2012. According to the DVLA, it is registered to a 2008 Mercedes.

4. G 1– £500,000

Formerly the most expensive plate in the UK, it sold at auction for exactly half a million pounds in 2011. The plate now sits on a 2015 model Aston Martin.

5. S 1 – £404,063

The S 1 is thought to be the first legal registration plate in Scotland. First sold in 2008, the plate now has an estimated value of closer to £1 million.