People often call wanting an authentic German License Plate, but, other than that, they are not sure what they want. While we have plenty of stock German License Plates, you can customize your plate and retain the authentic look if you know the basic system of how Germany assigns their license plate numbers.
IN GENERAL, German License Plates have the following basic format:
For more information about German License Plate City & Region Codes (
), please visit the full article on our website.
I hear this question at least once a day, and I certainly understand why. A better question might be, “Does my state require a front license plate?” or “Are your plates meant for legal use?”
We’ve tried to address this in our Custom European License Plate FAQ, but I thought I’d expand on that.
In short, in no state is it legal to use as your BACK plate. In some US states, they do not require a front license plate and you can display your custom plate. I did some searching and the following list seems to be the general consensus about which states* don’t require a front license plate:
Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia.
People also ask if it’s legal if they put their state issued plate number printed on a Euro-style plate and affix that to the front of their car. Assuming your state is not in the aforementioned list, this is still illegal. Same goes for putting your actual plate in your front dash, visor or window.
Of course, local and state laws change, and you can’t always believe what you read on the internet, so you should always check with your local Sheriff’s office to determine if it is ok to have a Custom European License Plate in your area.
That being said, we have customers all over the US as well as the world, so we know that quite a few customers choose to customize their ride, regardless of the laws.
*Sources:
eHow
Wiki Answers
Mr. Traffic
I try to take a look at each plate order before they go back to manufacturing. I can keep an eye out for any customer issues or concerns, but I also love to see what our customers are coming up with. There are often a few each day that make me laugh out loud, and I need to pick one for Plate of the Day for our Facebook page. You can see our orders on any given day by visiting the Plate Ideas Page.
Anyway, one that caught my eye this week was KÜHL WHIP:
If you didn’t already know, a whip is another way to say steering wheel, or even a car, or in particular a Mercedes (since the Mercedes logo looks something like a steering wheel). See the Urban Dictionary for an excellent definition. It’s a great play on words, and turns out to be a great idea for a Custom European License Plate.
Have you heard yet about the baddest animal in all the animal kingdom, the Honey Badger? If not, check out this video and see just how crazy this little guy is:
Now you can show the road you’re no one to mess with with our new Honey Badger plate. Put this plate on your vehicle and you’ll soon be known as the biggest badass on the highway!
Available in other color options.
We have now added a text color selector to most of our European license plates. For those of you that want to be even more unique than just the text, you can choose the color of the text now, and even see how it looks in our amazing plate builder!! A few of the examples are show above, mix and match whatever plate and text combination you like best.
As usual, we are always adding new products and updating our site. Visit us frequently to catch all the new and fun updates we bring!
https://www.customeuropeanplates.com/
Cheers!
Thanks to popular demand, we have added a Carbon Fiber European license plate. Our carbon fiber plate is a great way to make a unique statement. The plate is made from an Aluminum blank with a special coating that looks exceptionally close to real carbon fiber. Using Aluminum blanks with this special coating allows us to emboss your text into plate to add depth and that extra custom look. In addition to the carbon fiber look, the surface of the license plate has a gloss finish, further enhancing the look of the carbon weave. The text on the plate can be customized to be either Black, Red, White, Silver, or Gold.
Check out our up-close sample of our Carbon Fiber plate!
Check out the Carbon Fiber plate builder at this link:
https://www.customeuropeanplates.com/carbon-fiber-european-license-plate.html?category_id=1
Cheers!
After hearing many customers asking about our Ready-to-Ship German plates and how they can get the smaller space on their customized plate, we have added a new feature to our plate builder. Now when you are customizing your European License plate you can hit the “Half Space” button to add a smaller space. This is a popular tool for making more authentic German license plates and European license plates. This will also allow more room for customization when using spaces as the half space takes up less room.
Here’s a great example of how this “Half Space” can benefit you:
Check out how others have used the new “Half Space” Feature on their European License Plates!
https://www.customeuropeanplates.com/plate-ideas
Enjoy!
By popular request, we have added a 3M Dual Lock kit to allow you to mount your European license plate without drilling or using screws. We have been testing it for months and can honestly say it is rock solid. We currently offer it in clear so that you can mount your plate and remove it and it is difficult to see the Dual Lock on your bumper. Get a couple of kits – one for your US plate and one for your Euro plate and then you can swap them out if you need ;). Each kit has 5 squares about an inch in size. There are 2 pieces to each square – just like standard Velcro.
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The present German number plate format, used since 1994, uses black print on a white background and first provides information about the country where the car is registered, in the form of a D (for Deutschland) on the blue strip on the left, like many European Union number plates.
After that, there are between one and three letters which show the city or region where the car is registered. DD stands for Dresden, D for Düsseldorf and MST for Mecklenburg-Strelitz, for example. These units usually coincide with the German districts, in few cases an urban district and the surrounding district share the same letter code. Hanseatic cities may have an H in front of them, e.g. HH for Hansestadt Hamburg or HRO for Hansestadt Rostock. The number of letters in the city/region prefix often reflects the size of the city: one letter for a large city (B= Berlin or H=Hannover) two for a medium-sized city (DD= Dresden) or three for a small city (MST=Mecklenburg-Strelitz).
After the location name come the emission test and vehicle safety test stickers, then one or two usually random letters followed by one to four usually random numbers. The total quantity of letters and numbers on the plate is never higher than eight. One letter with low numbers are normally reserved for motorcycle use since the plates space of this vehicles is smaller.
Car owners can personalize their plates by choosing certain numbers or letters instead of the random ones at the end. For example, people living in the town of Pirna might choose PIR-AT 77, “Pirat” being the German for “pirate”; another favourite is BAR-BQ 777 for Barnim. Various combinations that could be considered politically unacceptable, mainly due to implications relating to Nazi Germany, are disallowed or otherwise avoided. The district Sächsische Schweiz uses the name of its main town, Pirna, in its code PIR, to avoid the use of SS, the name of the paramilitary organization; similarly SA is also avoided. In 2004 in Nuremberg, a car owner was refused a number plate beginning N-PD because of the connection to the political party, the NPD.
Example of banned combination (“NS”) which has been issued accidentally.Other banned combinations include the Nazi abbreviations HJ (Hitlerjugend, Hitler Youth), NS (Nationalsozialismus, National Socialism), SA (Sturmabteilung), SS (Schutzstaffel) and KZ (Konzentrationslager, concentration camp). Some registration offices have overlooked this rule by mistake, however; there are a few cars registered carrying prohibited codes, such as B-SS 12.
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