driving around on "applied for" is legal only for a limited time. i even drove my surf on temp plates for 2 months becaus ei was waiting for the "MA" series to start (i had already bought the plate but it hadn't arrived, and i refused to have an LV or LZ plate). technically you can drive on a temp plate forever as you just have to keep renewing the payments,... plus it's safer since there is some record of the car,.. though many IDE and IDF plated new cars are actually illegally registered or are unregistered so as to keep the resale value higher,.. which i find lame.
