I see the ads in the back of car buff magazines: Get your bent up plate replaced, so it looks as nice as your show car. Get the correct color and state slogan for it’s original year.
Would a license plate in a 50’s color scheme still be legal?
And I saw one on the street just yesterday, where they had gone farther back than that. The plate said '54 in the corner, and a little chrome box hanging off the plate had the current year. The car, however, was a '60s model.
It depends on the state. If it’s Wisconsin the law says no, it’s not legal, it has to be a state issued plate for on road driving. I guess you’ll have to hear from dopers from all 50 states to get a complete answer.
I suspect it’s going to be illegal in most places. After all, the purpose of a license plate is to show that you’re square with the State as far as automobile taxes go, and also to provide an identification for the cops in case you get in a high-speed chase after they spot you doing seventy-five in a school zone, not to decorate your car with something that you think looks pretty.
From the Official Code of Georgia:
It’s legal in Delaware, if it’s done in the old-fashioned style (white letters on black background).
It’s also the state where older numbers are auctioned off (officially, you’re buying the car and swapping the plates). My father-in-law was offered a few thousand dollars for his four-digit plate, and it’s not even an original four-digit (by that, I mean his plate has a two-letter designation for a particular type of car, so it wasn’t the orignal number issued decades ago).
It’s interesting that you should bring up Georgia, MEBuckner, since there has been an actual history here in that regard. For those who don’t know, Georgia requires only rear license plates. One consequence of this is that nothing affixed to your front bumper has any legal status. This came up as an issue mainly when a bunch of people (post-1996) wanted to display their old Olympic Commemorative plates - which, as I said, are considered legal on your front bumper as long as you have a proper plate and tag on your rear bumper. I’m assuming that a replica plate would be just as legal as an expired official plate, or those silly airbrush card you see on the front of some cars.
I dunno whether other single-plate states are equally lenient, or whether double plate states would tend to pull your legally registered Georgia automobile over for having inconsistent / fraudulent tags (This has been known to happen with Georgia’s stuipid paper “lot tags”, about which the less said the better. Further, IANAL - YMMV, AFAIK.
HAND.
Pennslyvania is another one-plate state, and you see all sorts of things in the front plate bracket, including some that look like official license plates. I’ve never seen nor heard of anyone getting in trouble for them, though.
On the other hand, they’d probably think of something to charge you with if your rear plate was PA, and your front plate was, say, a genuine Ohio plate (Ohio requires both).
That’s a great idea- as long as the plate(s) contain(s) the proper information/tags there shouldn’t be any rational objection to them- I’m all for them.
The state could get around funding issues by requiring purchase of modern plates (they’d get their pound of flesh) but allowing reproduction vintage plates to be OK for collector cars and such. Alternatively, they could re-issue older styles as part of a “vanity” program. For increased revenues, of course.
That seems to make sense, but it would then also make sense to sell off the old numbers that were never issued. In my state, for example, the first two letters were unique to each county. Smaller counties always had plates with low numbers following the letters.
Thanks to those who knew about particular states, especially MEBuckner for finding a real law reference. Nothing more convincing than legal phraseology, is there?