When I lived in Paris before, all the license plates looked like this. The last two digits of the license plate were the number of your département-- there are a hundred of them, and Paris is 75, so anyone in France would know that the car above came from Paris.
After driving through France a few times with a car immatriculé 75, I began to see the disadvantages of this. Paris is roughly as popular in la France profonde (deep France) as New York City is popular in the deep South.
So I wasn't surprised when a couple of years ago a change was announced. No longer are thieves able to tell your car is from a distant place. The new plates look like this:
On the right side of the license plate is a département number and above it the coat of arms of that region of France. But the owner of the car is now free to choose any département.
"Of course," I heard a speaker say on the radio, "certain départements are far more popular than others." The Alpes-Maritimes, or 06, for example (the French Riviera). The 14 (Calvados, in Normandy), the 64 (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), and other vacation regions are popular. People often choose the region their ancestors came from, with Brittany's black-and-white flag especially popular.
"But other départements," he went on, "are being depopulated. Guess which ones?"
The interviewer hazarded a guess. "93? 94?" Seine-Saint-Denis and Val-de-Marne are suburbs of Paris notorious for their no-go neighborhoods of high-rise government housing and immigrant populations. During the riots of November 2005, the jeunes of those départements were the ones burning cars and stoning buses.
"Correct," said the speaker. "But also 75. As it turns out, no one wants to be Parisian."
That's funny; I have been reading your blog on and off for years, and I just now noticed this post. It looked very familiar, for good reason: the car in the picture you used, is actually mine :-). (You're fine using it by the way, no harm there!)
It still has the plates with 75 on them, and I sort of wear them as a badge of honor, I kind of like showing my colors, even if they're not the most popular ones.
I also just realized that I am actually in a situation similar, but fairly opposite to yours: I'm a Dutch by birth, have moved to France, but am currently (temporarily) stationed in the United States. Same countries, different order!
Posted by: Wouter | 28 July 2010 at 11:51
How embarrassing! But also interesting! I'm glad you don't mind.
I was kind of disappointed to learn that our new car when I get back to Paris will not have the 75 plates. Sometimes I think that only foreigners like us really want them!
Do you have a blog? Would be interesting to have your take on France and the U.S.A. with your background.
Posted by: Sedulia | 28 July 2010 at 20:19