Double Parked

A man’s car is sacrosanct, right? But what if there’s another one out there that looks identical to it – right down to the number plates… The rise of car cloning in the UK

When the first penalty charge notice arrived, I almost paid it out of hand. It’s not like I couldn’t put the money to better use, but I could’ve done without the hassle of contesting it. And I’d clearly driven through the car-free shortcut on my way to my sister’s house the week before. I mean, look: here was a tiny, grainy thumbnail image of my car to prove it. Only, when I came to think about it, I hadn’t driven my car on that day – I never drive my car if I can avoid it. And was this my car?

The more detailed CCTV stills on the council’s website confirmed that while this may have looked like my family runaround – same model, colour and registration plate – it, in fact, wasn’t. There was no scrape along the side from when a tree got the better of my better half. If I could zoom in, I wouldn’t see the dink caused by an over-enthusiastic child opening the door. And the boot was missing the “GB” sticker, an unsightly and utterly pointless – since legally superseded, in 2021, by a more inclusive “UK” – identifier applied by the previous owner, which, several years later, I still hadn’t got around to peeling off.

Over the following weeks, as a flurry of 30 or 40 PCNs were fed through my letterbox, I came to realise that my car had been cloned. And, the fact that the crime number all-too-readily issued by the Metropolitan Police, and that “my car was clone” is now offered as an option when contesting charges through some London boroughs, suggests I’m not alone. (And I don’t just mean the other car.)

The same week I received my first PCN, The Guardian reported that car cloning had become “one of the UK’s fastest-growing crimes”, but warned that it goes on “barely acknowledged or recorded”. “If it happens to you, it can be a nightmare to resolve – one that will consume your life,” the story continued. And, for a while, it did.

***

The “car” of car cloning is perhaps misleading. No one clones your actual car, rather its registration plates. In some cases, victims have received charges for incidents involving a vehicle that’s an entirely different make, model and even colour to the one they own – and that happened in an entirely different part of the country. So maybe I should’ve felt just a pang of appreciation for the person or persons who took the time to find a car strikingly similar to mine, right on my doorstep.

Uncomfortably close at times, in fact. I got a ticket for one excursion in a bus lane at the end of my road. And, after tracking own movements in Google Maps, I discovered that one time, we were both driving at the same time down parallel roads (theirs was a vehicle-exclusion zone, obviously).

In some cases, licence plates are physically removed from one car and stuck to another. A much easier alternative, though, is for thieves to make their own. All they’d need is the number, gleaned from trawling classified ads, car showrooms and databases. Legally, you require the correct documents to get a number plate. However, a loophole in legislation allows plate makers to sell show plates without checks.

What perhaps made my car more of a target than most – and part of the reason why I’d bought it in the first place – is because it was so nondescript. The sort of car you wouldn’t look twice at. (Even if there were two of them.)

I wanted something practical, with a large boot. I’ve got two children and live in south London, where transport links are better than most places, but left wanting in comparison with the rest of the capital. Honestly, south Londoners have a real chip on their shoulder when it comes to this. But then we also have Morley’s, so I guess it evens out.

Weekends are often spent carting children around social events, which is made easier with a car. Plus, the storage space meant we could stash everything from a picnic table and fold-away gazebo to wellington boots and bikes. It was like a spare room parked in our street.

It was only after driving it around for a bit that the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon kicked in. I began to see remarkably similar families pootling around in the same car. A reliable, safe model with just enough legroom in the back seats and a recent facelift that made it not quite handsome, but not quite ugly. The right kind of distinctive blandness.

I remember laughing – years ago, in a different life – at a visual gag in Kevin & Perry Go Large. The Ford Focus had launched a few years before and had been such a radical departure from its predecessor, the Escort, that it might as well have been beamed down from out of space. By 2000, when the film arrived, there was one parked on every driveway in the dull suburban hellhole that Kevin and Perry called home. It had become a ubiquitous symbol of the surrender to middle age.

A couple and a bit decades on, I now owned the equivalent car. And for someone hoping to slink around unnoticed, this was a reliable, safe way to do so.

***

“‘Doppelganger’ comes from German, combining Doppel (double) with Gänger (goer),” writes Naomi Klein in Doppelganger, her 2023 book on the alt-right media ecosystem, which I happened to be reading at the time. Using a case of mistaken identity – the wider confusion between Klein and the author Naomi Wolf, the “Other Naomi” – as a jumping-off point, Klein offers a tourist’s guide to a mirror world of Plandemics, Q-drops and assorted wingnut conspiracy theories. “Sometimes it’s translated as ‘double-walker’, and I can tell you that having a double walking around is a profoundly unsettling experience.”

To which I’d add that other modes of transport are also available.

My interaction with my own double-driver didn’t became a book-worthy obsession on a par with Klein’s – habitual listening to Steve Bannon’s podcast was, thankfully, not a requirement. It did, however, come with a lot of paperwork. And sure, compared to the victims of many crimes, I’d got off pretty lightly. But for a good two months, most of my lunch breaks were spent contesting PCNs. Sat at my desk, rifling through automated letters and navigating London borough council websites while spooning shop-bought soup into my mouth. First world problems.

Most days, there was at least one PCN to reckon with. Occasionally, three or four would arrive at once. As the weeks wore on, I began to learn the idiosyncrasies of individual councils’ platforms. The online documentation proved fairly uniform in its set up, just with occasional variations to keep me on my toes (and, if I was feeling cynical, to prompt invalid replies). But, based on my limited experience, the relative ease with which I – no natural form filler-iner – successfully mastered the process adds weight to my perception that this crime is widespread. As cash starved as they are, most councils presumably just don’t want the hassle.

“There are ways to protect yourself from car cloning, or at least lessen the chances of if happening to you”

All the while, I read stories about an 88-year-old innocent facing an insurance premium that had doubled as a result of an accident that their car wasn’t involved in. And a care worker in Hertfordshire having their Kia Sportage reclaimed by bailiffs after transgressing London’s ultra-low emission zone 12 times – a good hour’s drive away, allowing for traffic. In comparison, my inconvenience was trifling at best.

That wasn’t all that the ordeal brought into perspective. The screenshots of my Google Maps timelines that I found myself pinging to borough councils across south London as evidence of my whereabouts revealed a pattern. My movements during the course of the average day tended to centre on my house or office, with the only excursions trips to local supermarkets or the kids’ school for drop off and pick up. Nearly all journeys were made by bike or on foot. Only once, the previously mentioned close run with my double, was I in my car.

At one time, I did seriously entertain the idea of a stakeout. Pitching up at the cut-through by my sister’s house, one of their most regular haunts, and waiting until they came by. A flask of coffee, donuts followed, eventually, by a frantic car chase – relatively speaking, given the 20mph speed restrictions – through Sydenham. But then I remembered that I’m a 46-year-old father of two small children, with a full-time job and a stack of PCNs to contest. And what am I even going to do if I ever catch up with them? So, I thought better of it.

What my dealings with my double did reveal, though, was that perhaps I wasn’t living life to its fullest. I certainly wasn’t using my car to it’s fullest (save its ample boot). Perhaps, instead of being suffocated by everyday duties, I should be thinking: what would the other driver do in this situation?

For that, I already have an answer. Shorn of the cost and responsibilities of car insurance, MOT and tax, with no limitations on where I can drive, I know exactly where I’d find myself. The backstreets of Lewisham at 4.43am – doing, well, I can hazard a guess. Put like that, it sounds less appealing.

A better takeaway from this experience would be to make more use of my car, in a good way. More weekend adventures, beyond the M25, for example.

As the weeks turned into months, the flow of PCNs thinned out and eventually stopped. Presumably the other driver had moved on to another car. When, some time later, I received notice from representatives of a chain of service stations for a tank of petrol that my double had made off with, I thought back to what I’d been through. There was almost a pang of warmth. A trip down memory lane, only with a bill (that, thankfully, I didn’t have to pay).

There are, I learnt, ways to protect yourself from car cloning, or at least lessen the chances of if happening to you. Personalised number plates or modifications to your vehicle’s bodywork, for example, are certainly markers of something – I’m trying very hard to put prejudice aside here – but will also put cloners off. They want to blend in, so anything distinctive should act as a deterrent.

Likewise, the scrapes and dinks that a less-lazy me probably would’ve sorted out long ago actually helped get me off the hook here. So, once again, hurrah for my lethargy!

But what I’d really like, to make my car stand out, is a custom-made bumper sticker. Something cheaper than a personalised plate that only I could own. It would be a nod to how I’d got here, but also a riff on that old trope. It would read: “My other car has been cloned”.

Only, predictably, I haven’t got to it yet. For now, the out-of-date “GB” will have to do.