You can spend your thousands on bushwhacking bumpers, you can mate your traction board’s magnets to the metal, you can rig your Rover box to the rear, but the best mod ever for your van is a stamped sheet of metal that attaches with two screws.
A custom license plate—a so-called vanity plate, a name given, I am quite sure, by some society of schoolmarms—adds personality to a van, far out of proportion to its size and cost. Functionality: Zero. Pizzaz: Wowza.
A custom plate, though, presents challenges far different than adding a mere ladder or winch. People will judge you on your vanity plate. They will spend time reading it, maybe deciphering it. They may be amused, puzzled, annoyed, or even (in rare cases where you can sneak something by the censors) offended. The reactions to your plate can be complex.
Take, for example, a winch. You add a winch to your van. What will be the reaction of people who see your van and notice the winch? There are only two possibilities. One, they will look at your winch, see that it has been used, see that it is dirty or scratched or worn in some way, and say to themselves, wow, I wonder where this guy has been? The only other possible reaction is they look at your winch, see that it is out-of-the-box new-looking, and think to themselves, who is this guy kidding? It’s a binary set of possibilities, it’s simple.
But a vanity plate? YOULOSE on a Lamborghini would certainly elicit some sort of reaction from every driver it passed, whereas MIDLIFE on a red Corvette would elicit almost the opposite reaction. IFIXIT on a junker, creaking down the road is a laugh, while ELECTRC on a jacked-up, black smoke-belching pick-up is a different kind of laugh.
Put WHATQC? on a Winnebago, and Noovo owners will remember how close they came. Either BROLAND or DADDY$ would tell the tale of a Storyteller, while REVLISH captures more about the reality of owning a GH1 than Tiffin had hoped.
For a Noovo? DETAILS is a choice that makes its point to owners of other RV brands, while FRENCHY is more fun for Noovo owners, in an insider-y way. NOODAY or NEWLIFE are fine, but maybe too much of a Hallmark vibe, while NOO4ME is a good choice if you can snag one of the rare used units.
We chose NOOVAN, the letters suggested after an attempt to squeeze NOOVANGO onto the plate, but only seven letters are allowed in California. But it works, maybe even better, as a statement of ambition. Our van is new, yes, we bought it this past April, and the company is new, founded during the pandemic, and the model we chose, the Plus, is new, ours is the second iteration. What is really new, however, is the approach that the company is taking toward its product, towards its customers. The company and the vans they produce seem intended to create something beyond vans, something to do with community and people and a different approach to life, something not yet quite defined. I wanted that thing, whatever it is, before I’d ever heard of Noovo—the notion is not some new-age marketing spiel, it’s a reflection of some fundamental change in society.
We needed a change, too.
NOOVAN. If you see us on the road, stop and say hello.
