I’m ordering a personalized German license plate for a friend’s retirement (he’s a BMW fanatic). His nickname is “Silver Fox.” Is “Silber Fuchs” the appropriate translation for the plate?
I think it’s just one word – “Silberfuchs”. Silberfuchs (Begriffsklärung) in the German Wikipedia.
And leaving the “s” off (“Silberfuch”) wouldn’t make sense, yes? Trying to fit letters on the plate 
I don’t know which letter you should drop to get it down to 10 letters on a number plate: perhaps “SILBRFUCHS”.
And one more . . .
Would a “real” plate use the weird “B” and a backwards “E” and “R” ??
It’s called an Eszett.
NO. The weird B, ß, is a double S. There are no backwards R and E.
By the “weird B” do you mean ß, a character called “Eszett” because it comes from “sz” being run together into one letter? I don’t know if it’s used on German number plates, but it would not be appropriate in “Silberfuchs”. The letter ß is also written as “ss” – it has no relation with the letter B.
The only backwards E that I can think of is the Japanese katakana ヨ, which is pronounced as “yo”, and a couple of Cyrillic letters З (“z”) and Э (“e”). The only backwards R is the Cyrillic Я, pronounced as “ya”. They would not be on German plates, and you’d only use them to represent German words if you were being funny.
Yes, would not make sense. Maybe leave out (some of) the vowels to make it fit.
Thanks, all! I went with “SLBERFUCHS,” he’s gonna love it!
And, hey, it was so much fun playing around with plates that I ordered one for me: “UBERHOLEN”
This truly is the smartest forum on the interwebs!
I was going to put “DAS BOOT” on my 740, but went with something else instead.
OMG, DO NOT park side by side anyplace!!
SLBER FUCKS UBER’s HOLE
Then some moron will ask you which one is which.
“And that’s when the fight started”
It’s not; the plates are always in caps, and ß is only used in lowercase.