Vanity Fair—Personalized Plates Is One Way To Express Your Ford Love
By Evan J. Smith
There are seemingly endless ways to customize your vehicle. Common mods include aftermarket wheels, body kits and a new paint job always does the trick. There are simple items that can be added in minutes and others that take lots of thought, combined with sweat equity and money.
On the simple side are vanity, or personalized license plates. In most cases adding them is as easy as a trip to your states Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), however, coming up with a clever name, saying or acronym is the hard part.
The Mustang hobby is full of innovation, customization and personalization. And nothing drives the point home like a specialized vanity plate. Whether you’re into horsepower, suspension, wheels and tires, a body kit, graphics, wraps and/or custom paint, a vanity plate adds a fun touch to your pony.
Vanity plates have been around for decades and are available in all 50 states, including the District of Columbia. As of 2007, there were roughly 9.7 million vanity plates in North America. In addition, some states offer motorists themed tags, which help support your favorite team, school, hobby or special cause.
For example, Florida offers over 100 specialty license plates with themed artwork for pro and college sports teams, military branches, and there are dozens of miscellaneous plates including Autism Awareness, NASCAR, golf, and Fallen Law Enforcement Officers to name a few.
Due to space constraints, vanity plates limit you to between five and eight characters (depending on your state), so part of the fun, or challenge, lies in finding a combination of letters and/or numbers to create your message. We’ve seen clever catch phrases, vehicle model descriptions and basic plates, too, like someone’s name. Some plates are self-explanatory with an easy-to-figure-out meaning, while others read like a riddle. Plate meaning is amazingly diverse, and Mustang owners have come up with some creative examples.
No matter the message, vanity plates have always intrigued us, and we’re spent time compiling out file full of cool ones. We’re sure you’ll love our gallery of over 150 plates so scroll through, check them out, and you may just find your own car in there.
We’ve always been intrigued by the creativity and the sheer mass of personalized plates that we’ve seen over the years, both at NMRA and NMCA events, along with other car shows. It’s enjoyable to see how the passion comes through and rarely do we pass on the opportunity to grab a photo when we some a cool one.
In fact, we’ve been compiling photos of plates for a long time, with the hopes of having enough to post a few. So here goes. Some of these grabs go back a lot of years, while some were snagged during the 2022 race season. And with the 2023 NMRA and NMCA season openers just about 6 weeks away, we’ll be peaking at bumpers and taking shots of those plates for another “Vanity Plate” post in the future.
By Evan J. Smith
There are seemingly endless ways to customize your vehicle. Common mods include aftermarket wheels, body kits and a new paint job always does the trick. There are simple items that can be added in minutes and others that take lots of thought, combined with sweat equity and money.
On the simple side are vanity, or personalized license plates. In most cases adding them is as easy as a trip to your states Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), however, coming up with a clever name, saying or acronym is the hard part.
The Mustang hobby is full of innovation, customization and personalization. And nothing drives the point home like a specialized vanity plate. Whether you’re into horsepower, suspension, wheels and tires, a body kit, graphics, wraps and/or custom paint, a vanity plate adds a fun touch to your pony.
Vanity plates have been around for decades and are available in all 50 states, including the District of Columbia. As of 2007, there were roughly 9.7 million vanity plates in North America. In addition, some states offer motorists themed tags, which help support your favorite team, school, hobby or special cause.
For example, Florida offers over 100 specialty license plates with themed artwork for pro and college sports teams, military branches, and there are dozens of miscellaneous plates including Autism Awareness, NASCAR, golf, and Fallen Law Enforcement Officers to name a few.
Due to space constraints, vanity plates limit you to between five and eight characters (depending on your state), so part of the fun, or challenge, lies in finding a combination of letters and/or numbers to create your message. We’ve seen clever catch phrases, vehicle model descriptions and basic plates, too, like someone’s name. Some plates are self-explanatory with an easy-to-figure-out meaning, while others read like a riddle. Plate meaning is amazingly diverse, and Mustang owners have come up with some creative examples.
No matter the message, vanity plates have always intrigued us, and we’re spent time compiling out file full of cool ones. We’re sure you’ll love our gallery of over 150 plates so scroll through, check them out, and you may just find your own car in there.
We’ve always been intrigued by the creativity and the sheer mass of personalized plates that we’ve seen over the years, both at NMRA and NMCA events, along with other car shows. It’s enjoyable to see how the passion comes through and rarely do we pass on the opportunity to grab a photo when we some a cool one.
In fact, we’ve been compiling photos of plates for a long time, with the hopes of having enough to post a few. So here goes. Some of these grabs go back a lot of years, while some were snagged during the 2022 race season. And with the 2023 NMRA and NMCA season openers just about 6 weeks away, we’ll be peaking at bumpers and taking shots of those plates for another “Vanity Plate” post in the future.
