Licentious Plates Spell TROUBLE for Spellbound Drivers

Late last month a letter was sent from here to a California motorist:

“The records of the Department of Motor Vehicles . . . show that Environmental License Plates IV NIK 8 were issued to you.

“The Department has determined that said plates carry connotations offensive to good taste and decency in that IV NIK 8 phonetically states ‘fornicate.”’

Therefore, the letter continued, the plates were being canceled. The owner was ordered to return them.

Such recalls amount to only about 1% of the 909,597 environmental, personalized or “vanity” plates currently registered in the state (out of a total of about 23 million), according to Marlys Whiteside, program manager with the department.

But that is enough to be a pain in the trunk.

Little did anyone anticipate problems 17 years ago when the Legislature enacted and then-Gov. Ronald Reagan signed into law an innocent-enough measure that sought to raise funds for environmental projects by charging a fee to vehicle owners who wished to create their own license plate letters and numbers.

‘The Dirty Dozen’

In fact, in that first year, only about 11,000 requests were made. Twelve women, who became known as “the dirty dozen,” sifted out the questionable ones, and little else came of the matter.

Debates often revolved around such subjects as whether or not to allow FDR, which to some people was a dirty word.

Not so in the year 1987. Clever indeed--and sometimes shady--are the requests that are submitted. Furthermore, a motorist who receives a letter such as the one above can appeal the ruling at an administrative hearing--and can sometimes win.

“Sometimes something will slip through, and we learn about it from complaints by people who have seen it,” said Mavis S. Wilson, manager of registration services.

Not that the DMV doesn’t do its DRNDEST. “We use foreign language dictionaries, one that gives foreign slang usage, a medical dictionary, the state Penal Code,” explained Kimi Langley, manager of the Special Plate Unit. “We read some of them aloud, some we show to a multi-language expert in our office, and on some others we consult the library at Cal State Sacramento.”

The 36 workers who report to her also deal with honorary counsel plates, and the ones for special equipment such as cement mixers, but much of their time is spent considering the 400 to 600 requests received daily for the personalized type. “Possibly eight to 10 are pulled as questionable,” Langley said.

“You wouldn’t believe how many variations are sought on the four-letter word,” Wilson said.

Occasionally a suggestive request sneaks through, and the plate has to be recalled--in IV NIK 8’s case without a challenge.

“Seniors, we find, are using their time to collect lists of objectionable plates and to let us know,” Wilson said.

“If the owner decides to fight the recall, he can request a hearing before administrative judges, which are located throughout the state,” Whiteside said. “We have been upheld on such denials as SSWAFEN and NUKEEM.”

On the other hand, she disclosed, the DMV has been overruled on its refusal of letter combinations best omitted from a family newspaper.

“We are almost always upheld on our denials of anything that has an ethnic or racial slur,” said Walt Steuben, allied processing manager.

Vanity plates are so popular now that a new business apparently has sprung up: being a broker for them.

This sort of thing has been going on for decades in Great Britain, which doesn’t have personalized license plates:

“There is a brisk market for what is called Elite Registration,” explained Angus MacKay, public affairs officer with the British consulate in Los Angeles. These are unusual combinations of letters and/or numbers that happen to have occurred in the regular course of issuance.

High Prices

He quoted from an ad in The Times of London last month:

“License HFD 917 being offered for 620 pounds (about $1,000).”

MacKay said the most common request on a plate is for initials, which presumably explains the above.

Another ad said somebody “urgently wanted” the plate “FSJ” and was willing to pay 300 pounds (about $500).

“Additionally, there are brokers who sell cars that happen to have a particular plate,” MacKay said. “The plate becomes a factor in the sale of the car.”

The idea of buying and selling plates has finally made it across the sea. A classified ad that appeared last Sunday in the Los Angeles Times, placed by the License Plate Exchange in the East Bay community of Concord near San Francisco, said: “Sell your unique or personal Cal. plates. Buyers will pay $100/$200.”

Gina McGuiness, communications manager with the DMV, said two parties can indeed agree to transfer plates.

“The new owner must initially put them on a vehicle, but then when the registration comes due--and if the plates are the environmental type--he can keep them just by paying the annual $20 renewal fee. The former owner must notify the DMV that he has given up the plates to someone else.”

This is necessary because there are quite a few Californians willing to pay the $36 one-time fee--if only they could be allowed that certain combination of magic letters and numbers.

Listings Fill Volumes

The rules of the game, however, stipulate that there be only one of any combination. These fill three volumes the size of phone books. And from the humble beginnings 17 years ago, computers now can instantly rule out a request for something already taken.

“Some people keep checking at the field offices,” said program technician Linnea Davis. “Just recently a man named Lanny was pleased to be finally told that plates with his name had been surrendered.”

Down through the years, personal names or nicknames on plates have remained popular. “It’s usually the first name that is in demand,” Steuben said. “I guess that because of the way some people drive, they don’t want their last name known.”

Davis said demand sometimes goes in phases, such as when certain movies are popular: “We had a period when there were a lot of requests for ‘Rocky,’ ” she said.

Celebrities, for their part, are among the seekers. For instance, Ernest Borgnine has BORG 9, and Lawrence Welk has A1ANA2.

Some former owners of vanity plates, however, now decline the honor. “At first, doctors were having MD on their plates,” Davis remembered. “Then they found that their cars were being broken into because they might have contained drugs.”

Expanding the Message

At present there may, according to Steuben, be something of a trend in the use of a frame to expand on a limited message in the seven-character plate:

Example:

Top of frame: “My Dad Is”

Plate: “MIA ‘66”

Bottom of frame: “Vietnam.”

And it has become something of a game to see how many words a motorist can fit into the allowable limit, such as a soft drink dealer whose plates read: CME47UP.

Incidentally, when demand required the state to expand plate characters from six to seven in 1978, the most sought-after wording was PORSCHE (426 requests), followed by FERRARI (176) and GOFORIT (150).

Personalized plates, along with all other kinds, are made by inmates at Folsom Prison. Inevitably, therefore, a motorist will at times open his plate envelope and find the metal stamped YOU BUM or HELP.

“Sometimes,” Steuben said, “the inmates slip notes inside the two plates, messages such as ‘write to me.’ ”

And the unexpected sometimes happens to motorists who put personalized plates on their cars:

“One man applied for and got a plate that said NO PLATE,” Steuben said.

“But there was one problem, and it eventually caused him to relinquish the plate. Throughout the state, whenever an officer issued a parking ticket for a vehicle without plates, he wrote: ‘No plate.’ ”

And guess who wound up getting all those tickets.