Cars and motorbikes: personalised number plates are on their way. Here’s how much they’ll cost
The change announced by the Prime Minister is set out in the new Highway Code
So far, we’ve seen them in films (“Outatime” on the De Lorean from Back to the Future, Ecto-1 from Ghostbusters) and in TV series (“Robin 1” on the Ferrari 308 GTS in Magnum, P.I.). But in future, personalised number plates will also be appearing on our roads.
The news was announced by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in the press conference following the Council of Ministers meeting that approved the budget bill: ‘One provision that might be described as a bit of a curiosity,’ she said whilst listing the measures in her fifth budget, ‘is that we are introducing the option for those who wish to do so to have personalised number plates: people will be able to let their imagination run wild, more or less as they see fit, though obviously at a cost. And something tells me that Italians’ creativity could really come into its own here.”
What’s new
In fact, the option to choose numbers and letters for one’s car number plate is provided for in the legislative decree that reformed the Highway Code, approved by the government on 13 October. This option is already available for classic cars, and a fee schedule has been established for it. The text states that the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport may ‘issue, at the request of the interested party, number plates featuring a personalised sequence and use of alphanumeric characters’.
In an article on the subject published on the website of its magazine *L’Automobile*, the ACI emphasises that offensive, ambiguous or potentially misleading combinations will still be prohibited, as will any duplicates.
The current standard system, introduced in 1994, consists of a combination of two letters, three numbers and two final letters. We will have to wait for the implementing regulation to find out what the format and permitted number of characters will be for ‘vanity plates’ (as they are known in the English-speaking world). It should be possible to obtain a personalised number plate even for cars that are already registered, but only in the event of re-registration due to theft, loss or damage to the existing number plate.
