Supercar owners tend to share certain traits, in our experience. There are always exceptions to any generalisation but, over time, it's hard not to notice the things people have in common. With supercar drivers, one of those things is confidence. No one buys a Pagani, a Bugatti, an Aston Martin, a Ferrari, a Lamborghini or any bona fide supercar in order to blend in. No one drives a car worth more than some people's houses in a bid to be inconspicuous.
Supercars are created as much to be seen as to be driven.
Outstanding cars deserve outstanding number plates
This is why you will rarely see one of these automotive artworks displaying a standard issue number plate. Drivers of the best cars know that only the best personal registration numbers can provide that perfect finishing touch to their pride and joy. To demean a supercar with a mundane number plate may not actually be illegal but it is certainly a crime against aesthetics.
Few people have the luxury and privilege of constant exposure to the world's most coveted automobiles. Carl Hartley is one of the few. As a top supercar dealer, Carl appreciates the unique qualities of each vehicle that passes through his hands. Small wonder that it can be very hard to let some of them go.
Carl summed up what he sees as the natural pairing of car and number plate in the video presented here.
Carl Hartley: "So, when you have a boat and you get the champagne, and you break the champagne over the hull of the boat to christen it and say 'Welcome to the world!' ... This is my equivalent of that." [Carl shows his private registration plate and affixes it to a Pagani Huayra] "And there we go!"
Basic principles
There is a principle in architecture that has since been widely adopted by design in general. That principle is usually quoted as "Form follows function".
It was first expressed by American architect Louis Sullivan in 1896 when he wrote the following:
Whether it be the sweeping eagle in his flight, or the open apple-blossom, the toiling work-horse, the blithe swan, the branching oak, the winding stream at its base, the drifting clouds, over all the coursing sun, form ever follows function, and this is the law. Where function does not change, form does not change. The granite rocks, the ever-brooding hills, remain for ages; the lightning lives, comes into shape, and dies, in a twinkling.
It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law.
Designing the best
"Form ever follows function". Sullivan's summary itself is a wonderful piece of engineering: concise, elegant, poetic.
Consciously or not, supercar design at its best follows this philosophy. Performance is paramount; all else must follow. The people who devise these dream machines create vehicles that are fundamentally shaped as their function dictates, but that necessary form is expressed with elegance and style. Peak engineering meets peak aesthetics.
The supercar is art, but it is also a superbly efficient machine that casually drives right over Oscar Wilde's claim that "all art is quite useless."
This is why only the best cherished registration is good enough for a true supercar.
