My Windstar just died last week. It’s been a lemon since we bought it new in 1995 (electrical problems, shitty gaskets, we had to replace the transmission shortly after the warranty was up) and now it has an internal engine knock signaling that it is no longer long for this world. Fine – it was good timing, actually – we just bought a used Thunderbird for our 17 year old son and, since he has his permit but won’t get his license until October, I have that to drive until I buy a new car.
So, my next car will be my first “dream car” in the sense that I will be choosing it myself based completely on what I want. My previous cars have all been pragmatic choices: My first car was a used Datsun I bought in 1979 because it was the best car on the lot that I could afford. My second car was a Plymouth Horizon which we bought because we wanted a new car (we had 2 babies and my husband was in the Navy and shifting to sea duty, so we wanted my car to be under warranty while he was gone so much) and it was the absolute cheapest new car available at the time. That was a good car, actually. Then, the Windstar, which I always disliked but was practical when I was hauling little kids around. Anyway, my husband is now under the impression that we are still “researching,” and I suppose we officially are, but I’ve pretty much made up my mind that I want a Mazda3 hatchback – it’s cute, it’s inexpensive, it gets decent gas mileage, I can fit my daughter’s wheelchair in the back, and it’s available in an absolutely delicious yellow.
So – and I know this is goofy, so don’t feel you have to pop into this thread just to tell me that – I want a personalized license plate on my lovely new car and I’m trying to decide exactly what. I thought I’d do a little poll here and see which of my choices my fellow Dopers think best. My first thought was of some variation of “Skeptic” or “Skeptical” but, according to the DMV website, all such variations are taken – including “Prove It,” which I’ve always thought would make a clever license plate. However, one skeptical option is still available:
Choice 1: DOUBT IT
Next I turned to the SDMB and tried several board-specific options, thinking it would be kind of cool to have a plate that only fellow Dopers would ‘get’. My two favorites are available. So:
Choice 2: STR8 DPR
Choice 3: HI OPAL
Finally, I thought of the color of my car – I have always wanted a yellow car and the Mazda, as I said, comes in a particularly gorgeous shade. It’s a bright sunny yellow with orange metal-flake. The end result is iridescent – yellow in some lights, almost orange in others. Thinking of different ways to say “bright, shiny yellow” in 6 letters or less led me to think of the derivation of “Mazda.” Of course my fellow Dopers are familiar with the Zoroastrian god Ahura Mazda and I started wondering how Zarathustra would have said ‘yellow.’ Turns out (damn, I love the internet!) the oldest remaining Zoroastrian religious texts were written in Avestan, a now very dead language. And, online, I was able to find an Avestan-English dictionary. There wasn’t a direct translation to ‘yellow,’ but there were several words for “shining, radiant, golden” and such. Most of them were too long for a license plate, of course, but I was able to find two words for ‘shining’ that translated into 6 letters or less. So:
Choice 4: RAOCAH
Choice 5: BAMIM (there oughta be circumflexes above the vowels, but the DMV don’t do dat.
So, whaddayathink?