Number plate spotting may be one rung further down the slippery ladder that is the world of automotive geekery than car spotting but that doesn’t make it any less fun. Personalised number plates have pretty much been around since number plates were first used in 1903.
But have you ever wondered which car brand owners are most and least likely to put a personal plate on their car?
To find out the answer, YesAuto put a Freedom of Information request into the DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licencing Agency) to see what the official stats were.
The initial answer wasn’t what we’d hoped. Due to cost restraints the information we were after, namely to supply the percentage of personal plates on each car brand at the end of 2020, wasn’t readily available.
However, the DVLA was able to provide the list for cars first registered in 2020 with a personal plate. In other words, when they drove off the forecourt they had a personal plate on the front and back rather than the standard date-identifying pair.
Obviously, many people buying a new car will change their plate at a later date, but the figures supplied are for the most part a level playing field.
We’ve ranked our list by percentage, rather than total, to make a fair comparison air between the different makes of car.
Top 15
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s the supercar and premium makes that roll out of showrooms with the highest proportion of personal number plates.
For the ultimate supercar brand Ferrari, just over half of all new cars it sold in the UK left the showroom on a personal plate.
However, there are a few surprises in the top 15. Malvern-based Morgan is the first at number 2 in our listing; nearly 41% of the British brand’s motors were put on a personal plate, beating Lamborghini, McLaren and Aston Martin into third, fourth and fifth respectively.
The next big surprise is Subaru. It may be 13th in this list, but the brand once best know for the WRX is mixing with some far more premium makes.
Middle order
While it’s clear people buying expensive cars can more afford a personal plate than those buying a less expensive model, sticking with this theory doesn’t really work out.
For instance, high value (lower cost) brand Ssangyong is only one place behind Audi and one place above BMW. Equally Polestar which has a range starting at £39,900 is only just ahead of Fiat with a range that typically costs less than half that figure.
Bottom 10
Remember that note about a level playing field, well, in the way that Tesla likes to be a disruptor, it’s even managed to disrupt this chart.
Coming in last for personal plates with just 0.02% being sold with a private registration set alarm bells ringing. In fact, at 0.02% that’s just five cars according to the DVLA. What’s interesting is the DVLA provided the stats not just for 2020 but for the previous 10 years too. And while there’s very little change in the ranks and percentages for all other brands, until 2018 Tesla was running at about 20%, enough to put it firmly in the top 15. However, in 2019 the figure dropped to 2% before last year’s 0.02%.
Tesla didn’t respond to our request for an explanation but industry experts we’ve spoken to suggest the drop may simply be a policy change at Musk’s EV company where they no longer help customers put a private plate on their new car.
Either way, it’s clear from simple observation that as soon as Teslas reach the hands of customers they do put personal plates on their cars.
Keyword: Car makes with the most personal number plates