We were driving down through France recently, and stopped at a supermarket just off the N10 north of Bordeaux. We were just getting ready to leave when a French motorhomer pointed out our front numberplate was missing. He reckoned we were very lucky not to have been stopped by the police.
How lucky, we thought, that there was a car accessory supermarket adjacent, just about to reopen after lunch. What we then found though is that acrylic plates in France are produced by computer, and the program only supported the French format, not the LL NNN LLL UK format (where L is letter, N is number.). So we then looked at metal plates, produced manually with dies. No luck there either - our registration includes a letter (U) which is never used in French registration numbers, apparently because of possible confusion with V - so the U die is not produced. We eventually managed to fabricate a pretty good approximation with the aid of sticky-backed plastic from a Bricomarche, white, black and clear for protection, using tissue paper to trace the outline from the rear plate. Not perfect but good enough to convince numberplate recognition cameras at site barriers!
Now maybe we were just very unlucky to lose the front plate (although the back plate fell off our last van , but fortunately on the drive.). But I’ll certainly be taking spare plates with us in future, and thought others might want to consider doing the same?
How lucky, we thought, that there was a car accessory supermarket adjacent, just about to reopen after lunch. What we then found though is that acrylic plates in France are produced by computer, and the program only supported the French format, not the LL NNN LLL UK format (where L is letter, N is number.). So we then looked at metal plates, produced manually with dies. No luck there either - our registration includes a letter (U) which is never used in French registration numbers, apparently because of possible confusion with V - so the U die is not produced. We eventually managed to fabricate a pretty good approximation with the aid of sticky-backed plastic from a Bricomarche, white, black and clear for protection, using tissue paper to trace the outline from the rear plate. Not perfect but good enough to convince numberplate recognition cameras at site barriers!
Now maybe we were just very unlucky to lose the front plate (although the back plate fell off our last van , but fortunately on the drive.). But I’ll certainly be taking spare plates with us in future, and thought others might want to consider doing the same?
