License plates are a highly emotional matter. Unforgotten: The beautiful Andi from the twelfth grade once had “AB 1712” on his dark blue three-seater Golf, his initials and his birthday. As soon as I caught this combination of letters out of the corner of my eye, my heart exploded, back in the smoking area of the school yard. Later I got my first license plate on my first car. Anyone who didn’t actively try to find the combination was assigned something like “XY 1009”, and no one wanted that. A friend once almost suffered a meltdown at the admissions office because she couldn’t decide between the combinations offered to her. One reminded her of her ex, the other, in a strange way, of Franz Josef Strauss.
So people come up with cheeky combinations, probably to express their individuality on the street. There are a lot of “S-KY”s and “S-UN”s driving around in Stuttgart, which is supposed to symbolize a certain summery casualness; special jokers use “S-EX”. In Mannheim there is the “MA-US”, in Gardelegen in Saxony-Anhalt they are “GA-GA” and in Osnabrück there are supposedly “OS-SI”s driving around.
In Bavaria people were relatively safe from funny puns, as the place names take care of everything. Who hasn’t had that one visitor from a distant federal state who laughed for hours at “Tittling” or “Feucht”? So far there hasn’t been much use of license plates in the Munich city area either; the single letter, the “M”, symbolized the power of the big city and is difficult to combine. An empowering “M-UT”, for example, or a tired “M-AU”, neither of which necessarily looks attractive on the highway. At least you can also have an “M-AX” in Munich, that’s what the Andis are called here.
But now comes the good news for all fans of asphalt humor: Munich is getting another license plate. Because the possible combinations with the “M” are gradually running out, the Federal Ministry of Transport has now decided to also allow “MUC” in the future. MUC, that is the city abbreviation for Munich Airport. MUC is cosmopolitan and international, definitely more Los Angeles than Tittling.
The “MUC” also opens up a whole new world of possible combinations. How about MUC-HO? For all fans of Spain and Latin America. MUC AI for gym freaks. Or MUC-KE for music lovers. Take that, S-KY! Now all you have to do is have a car.
Christiane Lutz’s first license plate was a random “YE”. She liked it.