Clifford Holland's "MRCLIFF" personal plate graces his favorite car -- a 1956 Ford Thunderbird. (Katie Miller)
When Clifford Holland completed a full restoration of his 1956 Ford Thunderbird, he knew just the thing to finish off the two-year project: personalized license plates that would let everyone know "MRCLIFF" owned the pristine car.
One of his employees gave Holland the nickname in the 1970s. "He had some language barriers but used to call me Mr. Cliff, and it stuck," Holland says.
The Beacon Hill resident says the car -- his favorite out of eight he owns -- attracts a lot of attention.
"When you take a Thunderbird out there, it automatically turns heads," he says. "People are giving you the thumbs up. It's an attention-grabber."
Bill Wilson's personal plates honor his favorite band, British rockers Level 42. The group autographed a plate after a show. (Courtesy of Bill Wilson)
He says most people who ask about his personalized plates are trying to find out if he's "Mr. Cliff."
"People who don't know me say, 'Oh you must be Cliff,' " says Holland, who is president of the Old Rides Car Club.
Drivers who want to get creative with up to seven characters -- and who are willing to answer a lot of questions from fellow motorists -- are likely candidates for personalized plates. As of the end of August, Washington state has 81,993 cars registered with personalized plates, up from 81,143 last year.
John Spear sports "VSH" -- the island code for Vashon Island -- on his blue 2006 Audi A6. He says he decided to forgo traditional plates when he bought his new car, opting for something fun instead.
Spear says he attracts the most attention on the ferry ride to Vashon Island, where he's a weekend resident. "People think I'm the mayor," he says.
He says his personalized plates are more fun than a random combination of numbers and letters, and he enjoys guesses to the meaning of VSH.
"It doesn't stand for 'very sexy hunk,' " Spear says with a laugh.
Personalized plate facts
- Drivers can choose a combination of letters, numbers, hyphens or spaces from one to seven characters long.
- Plates cannot contain unusual characters such as #, %, &, @, + or !.
- Applications can be denied for being a racial, ethnic, lifestyle or gender slur, or blasphemous, derogatory, slanderous or potentially misleading.
- Personalized plates can cost up to an additional $50 a year on top of regular registration fees. The revenue generated goes toward the Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Brad Benfield, spokesman for the Department of Licensing in Olympia, says he thinks personalized plates are just "a fun way to individualize your car. It's something different. There are a lot of people who like to be a little different."
Bill Wilson's "LEVEL42" plate has graced three cars over 14 years; it features the name of the Renton resident's favorite band. Wilson has been a fan of the English rockers since he was 17 and has found that, although Level 42 is a bit obscure in the U.S., people still recognize the name once or twice a year.
Wilson says, though, that the most common question he gets is: "What in the world is Level 42?"
The plate now lives on his 2002 Honda Odyssey minivan, which he purchased to complement his growing family.
It wasn't until this year that Wilson finally got to see Level 42 live in San Diego. The minivan was left temporarily stripped of its back plate while Wilson had all five members of the band autograph it.
Wilson says: "When the lead singer, Mark King, saw the license plate, his reaction was, 'I need to sign that!' "
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