For readers from the US, this is probably difficult to understand, but not every country has vanity plates. And even if they are allowed, most of the time they aren’t completely free form. A good example is the British plates where you often need to decypher what the buyer intended. German plates do allow a bit of freedom, but most of the format is set in stone.
The license plates in Germany start with the region or city of issuing the plate. For instance, any plate starting with a B has been issued in Berlin. Similarly, any plate with LAU has been issued in the Lauf region. You may also encounter plates like HH for Hamburg, where the extra H stands for Hansestadt. So these region prefixes are set in stone and these are followed by serial letters and numbers. Any combination from A1 to ZZ9999 is possible. Normally you will get a plate randomly assigned, but for only 10 euros you can pick and choose one. This means you would be able to get a plate, if available, with AE and 86 in it. And that’s exactly what many owners of AE86es in Germany have done. I have a vast collection of German plates containing AE and 86. Many of those are on an AE86, but some of them are unfortunately attached to a VW Golf or Audi A4.
The vanity plate on the VW Crafter above would also qualify in that latter category. However, its load would qualify in the former! On top of that, the load it’s carrying wears a JDM license plate. People with a keen eye will recognize this plate instantly: the 群馬 (Gunma) 55 お (O) 13-594 license plate is normally found on the Fujiwara Tofu-ten AE86!
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