Sell out.
Shoulda left the frames on, gone to Jiffy Lube for the first five, and brought in the receipts for those when you came in for your freebie #6…
I don’t wear a lot of clothes that have the brand name on the outside of them, but apples and oranges anyway. If I buy a plain tee-shirt on my way through the check out at the store they don’t put an iron on of their name on it without asking me.
I own a Vette and a Silverado that I paid 60 & 45K for respectively. They are mine, i paid for them, and I don’t want a gaudy dealer sticker on them.
The make/model emblems at least have been designed to go with the cars outer decor.
When I get my license plate from the DMV —about a month after I buy a car —I don’t reinstall the dealer frame when I put it on. I throw it out. Not because I have anything particularly against advertising for the dealer, but simply because why should I have to go through extra work of putting his frame back on?
In my opinion, it looks better with a frame and, in my experience, weathers better with one (fewer dings or bent corners). I’m not about to go all the way to the store and buy a new frame so the one that came with the car can stay there.
With my current car though, I was just having my plates transferred. The dealer put them on my new car and, aside from making sure they were in fact attached, I immediately stopped thinking about it.
In most examples I can think of, there are two major differences. One is long-established norms and expectations: a product’s brand appears almost universally on everything, to the extent that a product without a brand name or logo actually looks rather odd. The second and perhaps more important point is that the brand name or logo is often an integral part of the product design and thus part of its aesthetics. For instance the Nike swoop on my sneakers is coordinated in color and style with the rest of the design and is visually part of the styling. On cars, you might have something like the classic Mercedes three-pointed star either as a hood ornament and on the rear trunk, or integrated into the styling of the front grille. Rolls Royce literally elevated this to an art form with their Silver Lady statuette. (Not that I, personally, own either a Mercedes or a Rolls, but I appreciate the aesthetics!) One can hardly compare this with an ugly plaque or sticker promoting a dealership. The actual nameplate that labels the make of the car is always carefully blended with the design and is usually tasteful and discreet and an integral part of the product identity. The self-promoting doodads that the dealer adds are not; they often clash with the aesthetics, providing a touch of ugly while serving absolutely no good purpose.
I should add though – in reference to the Nike swoop – that I wouldn’t accept obviously visible branding on most items of apparel, which I consider one of the few exceptions to the ubiquity of visible product branding in our world. I know there are shirts and socks and probably many other things that display product brands, and I’ve always regarded that as silly and a bit pretentious.
That’s an interesting point; bare plates are more likely to get bent. One of my neighbors has a front plate that looks as if someone tried to fold it like a paper airplane. 
I prefer the minimalistic, no-frame look, but occasionally I have bought plain chrome license plate frames AFTER plates have gotten bent corners. Once a plate is damaged that way, it’s never the same and usually gets worse if left unprotected.
I’ve heard that if you special-order a car from the factory (as opposed to buying one already on the lot) you can get it without manufacturer’s insignia or other branding. However, I’ve never known anyone who did that, and I don’t recall seeing any brand-less cars (though admittedly I haven’t been looking).
The manufacturer has a legitimate claim to the item. They made it, and how well it does its job reflects on them. The seller has much less a claim. At most, maybe they could claim the repair job they did, but then that should be a label on the inside.
That said, I do not often buy products that I use in public with labels on them that are predominant. The only thing I can think of is my Amazon tablet, and that’s recessed in a way that you can’t normally see it. My clothing definitely doesn’t support a brand unless that’s specifically the reason I bought it (like when I’m buying a shirt to support someone I watch online.) Most everything else, the labels are always in a place that most people would never see it, like the tags of clothes.
I definitely don’t leave any sales stickers on those clothes. Removing stickers and license plate covers on cars seems like the same deal.
I get finding utility in frames, but they also are quite cheap. I would be more likely to replace it than keep the seller’s branding on it, unless the sellers branding actually somehow looks cool–which is unlikely the case.
That is another reason with the t-shirt I bought to support a creator. The creator had tons of designs, and I picked one. And then I also customized it with my username, to make it mine. It looks like Phoenix Wright, but with the low-bit mascot of the show that just looks cool, even if you know nothing about the show.
Dealer stickers come off easily if you warm them up with a hair dryer.
I have seen a couple cars bearing a sticker from one dealer and a plate frame from another. I figured the second dealer was lazy.
In my experience the adhesive left a ghost mark and as much as I tried buffing it out it could still be seen on that area.
It’s obnoxious for dealers to slap an advertisement on your car without asking permission. I’ll bet if they asked first at least 9 out of 10 buyers would say no!
But the very car itself is an advertisement. And if we really want to be principled about it, wouldn’t we rather be advertising for the local business than the multinationals that cheated on emissions standards, or who needed government bailouts in 2008?
Note: I used to be a frequent reader of Adbuster but I just can’t get worked up about it anymore.
The 50th Anniversary Bullitt-commemorative-edition Mustang, in tribute to the original movie car’s appearance, is clean of all exterior Ford/Mustang branding, with just a “Bullitt” badge on the rear where the “gas cap” badge would have been in the old days.
Thing is, for those who care and know, what it represents is obvious from the styling cues so no labeling is really needed.
It costs you money to replace the frame and time to remove stickers. I guess it depends on what the car is.
If it’s a shiny new BMW you are trying to impress people with, yeah, go for it. Make that baby shine.
If it’s a used Prius you’re a little ashamed to be seen driving, then who cares? That’s another dollar saved by not having to replace the frame.
A license plate frame doesn’t need to be replaced, so it’s fine to have a naked license plate on the car.
Something holds the plate onto the car…both my cars, that thing has the dealer’s branding on it. I would have to spend my own money to remove it. Neither car is something sexy or high end so I have no reason to.
The “something” that holds the plate onto the car is almost certainly a couple of machine screws. They go through the license plate, and then the dealer-branded frame and then are screwed into the car. It would cost you nothing to remove the frame, assuming you already own a screwdriver or pair of pliers.
Mine isn’t mounted that way. There are separate holes that hold on the frame, that are spaced the wrong distance apart for a license plate. So I would have to buy an unbranded frame, hopefully one that has screw locations compatible with my existing frame, then install it.
OK, that’s weird. In your case, perhaps you have a good reason to retain the dealer frame. But for most cars, the dealer frame uses the same hole placement as the license plate itself.