VW 1 Volkswagen Number Plate

There are very few private registrations in the United Kingdom that can be traced back to the 1920s.

is one of them. This is not simply the best Volkswagen plate in Britain. It is one of the oldest recognisable brand-matching registrations in existence, issued decades before the marque it now represents had sold a single car on British soil. The Origins VW was issued as a county combination sometime between 1927 and 1930, making

VW 1

a registration that predates Volkswagen's presence in the United Kingdom entirely. The Beetle did not begin arriving in Britain in any meaningful numbers until the early 1950s. When

VW 1

was first issued, the Volkswagen as a production vehicle barely existed at all, the factory at Wolfsburg only opening in 1938. The letters VW on a British number plate in the late 1920s meant something entirely different to the person who first received it. The coincidence is one of the more remarkable in the history of British registrations. Ian Skelly: The Man Who Saw What It Could Be The figure at the centre of the

VW 1

story is Ian Skelly, a Scottish motor dealer who built a dealership empire spanning Glasgow and Liverpool over several decades. Skelly started in the Ford business, running franchises that sold volume cars to Scottish and northern English buyers throughout the 1970s. When the business shifted toward Volkswagen and then Audi in the 1980s, Skelly's commercial eye for what the marques represented was matched by a personal fascination with the plates that bore their initials. At his peak as a collector, Skelly held

VW 1

,

AUD 1

,

VW 11

,

1 EYS

, and

YMS 1

in the same collection simultaneously. The decision to unite

VW 1

with

AUD 1

under a single ownership was not accidental. It was the deliberate act of someone who understood that the two registrations belonged together, and who had the commercial success to make it possible. In 1989, Skelly sold the dealership business for £18 million. The plates, however, were not part of that transaction. The Legacy As of 2008,

VW 1

remained registered to the Ian Skelly Centre, his former Volkswagen and Audi dealership operation across Bogside in Glasgow and Liverpool. In the years since, it has moved on, and today

VW 1

can be spotted on demonstration vehicles, a registration that has travelled from late 1920s county issue to Ford dealer to Volkswagen franchise to private collection and back again. A plate issued before its marque existed in Britain. Collected by a man who built his fortune selling that same marque's cars. And now carrying the most recognisable two letters in German motoring on whatever vehicle it graces.

VW 1

was never designed to mean what it means today. That is precisely what makes it so compelling.