Nick Larkin
Our Nick contemplates the notion of the cherished number plate.
Tension hung in the air like smog, fainting ladies had to be revived with smelling salts and gin while grown men ground their teeth as the auctioneer, his moustache quivering in anticipation and grasping the podium with white knuckles, clocked up the bids.
Bingo! A world record price for a private auction reached! Finally, a figure of £460,000 was offered. A dropped pin seemed to clatter like a ship’s girder.
‘Going once, going twice. SOLD!’ The gavel fell, the room erupted with riotous applause, Champagne corks popped like firecrackers, then a bevy of Tiller Girl-style dancers took to the stage amid a haze of dry ice, balloons, streamers and glitter. Finally Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan sang Judy Clay and William Bell’s 1969 classic You Can Have My Private Number(plate).
The lucky bidder, a floral garland around his neck and covered in lipstick kisses, was helped into a waiting straitjacket after spending a king’s ransom to acquire the registration RR 1, or in other words, a couple of metal plaques and a retention form. He was last heard mumbling: ‘Oh no, I should have spent the money on restoring Wolseleys!’
Hmm. ’fess up time. I only managed to attend the preview of the Bonham’s Goodwood Revival sale (thanks for the warm welcome!) so the above is actually how the auction panned out in my sad head.
Toby Wilson, Bonham’s Head of Automobilia, said: ‘We were absolutely blown away by the result for RR 1. The market for very special vehicle registration plates remains strong, and an opportunity like this was clearly unmissable for a true Rolls-royce enthusiast.’
I rushed home to grab a fascinating book bought from an Oxfam shop in Nottingham many years ago. Car Numbers by Noel Woodall is an epic tome from 1974, which lists more than 10,000 private plates.
Incredibly most owners have their addresses and even photographs listed so you could pop round, see their plate and hopefully be invited in for a nice cup of Co-op Divi tea and a fig roll.
Mr Woodhall is credited with having kickstarted the ‘cherished’ number industry and even coined a term for numberplate study and presumably today’s odious practice of plundering plates from classics to put on hideous modern vehicles – this heinous crime is known as ‘autonumerology.’ Sir Stirling Moss’, owner of SM 7, says in a foreword to the book that having a distinctive number plate was a mixed blessing. ‘The more appropriate the registration the closer it is to having your name engraved down the side of your car.’ Yes, it’s there. In 1974 RR 1 is listed in the ownership of dealer HR Owen, having made a world record price of £4800 when offered ‘for sale by public tender’. Some plates worth a fortune today were at the time on some extremely mundane vehicles. For example 1 BTA adorned a Mini Clubman estate and an Austin Allegro boasted DRM 1. Nothing quite beats CCC 1 – that was originally on a Caernarvon County Council road roller! ACG 4 honestly belonged to one, would you believe, Miss A Gear, which the author gleefully points out was ‘hardly a good name for a lady driver’. We all remember vehicles with distinctive plates. A Hartlepool Transport Leyland double-decker sported the plate JEF 1, which Jeffrey the Porsche owner would have loved, and a British Telecom Austin Maestro van oft seen around Peterborough was registered E100 HOO, which with slight moving of the 1 would have been the perfect plate for tearful footballer Paul Gascoigne Oh no, warped imagination has kicked in again and I see RR 1’s new owner returning home. ‘Have a nice day at the auction, dear?’ ‘Yes, I bought RR 1!’ ‘Ooh, a nice Rolls-royce?’ ‘Erm.…’