Number Plate Stories

There will always be a number one number plate

By Ruby Speechley

Owning a ‘number one’ plate is what many cherished number enthusiasts aspire to. ‘The lower the number the greater the status’, reported the Ford Times in 1963. ‘One’s’, it said, ‘are the most sought after trophies.’

Registrations like this are hard to come by, mainly because they were usually allocated to Mayoral cars. Famous people and their families sometimes requested them from local authorities. Amy Johnson’s father asked the London County Council for AMY 1 in 1924, eight years before the AMY series of plates was on general issue. He wanted to give a car with this special plate to his famous daughter, to celebrate her successful solo flight to Australia.

Sir Norman Wisdom was well known for owning a ‘one’ plate - 1 NW, which decorated his S-type Bentley from 1958 to 1982. He also had NW 4, because four is his lucky number. For many years, it was en vogue to have your own personal plate if you were in the public eye. Somehow you hadn’t made it if you didn’t at least use a car with a personal number.

When Cary Grant visited London, he used a car with the number CG 1 and PET 1 was once owned by Petula Clarke. The entertainer Max Bygraves was lucky enough to have MB 1 on his Rolls Royce for so many years, that the plate will always remain associated with him.

But not all celebrities want to be spotted easily and many often choose to disguise their ‘number one’ plate. Former champion jockey, Willie Carson did just that. He decided to have N1 WHC instead of something that people would recognise him by. Of course for Willie, ‘number one’ also represents his achievements in the horse-racing world.

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