CA Personalized Plates

I recently went through the trauma of persuading CA DMV to allow me to put Year of Manufacture (black) plates on my Tiger. This was a long story that you can read in the April 2010 Edition of the Central Coast British Car Club on-line newsletter the Clear Hooter.

http://www.centralcoastbritishcarclub.com/pdf files/newsletter 2010/April_final-2010-SM.pdf

As part of that process they take away your existing plates and at one point I thought they would not allow the black plates and that I would have to accept modern plates or apply for personalized plates. If any of you have tried this you wil know that almost any combination of Tiger/Tigger/Grrr etc. suitable configurations have already been claimed. However I did eventually stumble on a good one that is available. I thought about putting it on a road car and selling it to a rich Tiger owner, but naaa.

So for any CA owner that wants them, 65V8CAT, 66V8CAT, and 67V8CAT are still available. I am real happy with the black plates my car originally came with.

Bill Rogers

Thanks for that info Bill.

Steve

Meoooww

V8KITTY ??

Sorry not available. You can go to the DMV site, under personalized plates, and check any configuration for availability. I guess they still have to approve it in case it is offensive or something.

Bill

Around 1990 sometime I was on a lunch break from work and a red Miata buzzed past me and I noticed it had a license plate with TIGER spelled out and thought there's a nice plate and wondered about how the two might have come to be on that car.

Some time had passed and in just around the same area I saw the car and plate again but was prepared and was able to wave the gal over and asked if she would be interested in selling the plate as I had a Tiger and the plate would be perfect for my car. She said OK, signed a little DMV slip releasing her interest and I got the plates.

For one reason or another the plates wound up in the back of a cabinet where they remained for many years (15+) until recently when I started receiving notices that I would loose the plates if I didn't register them. I am sure this notice was just of a type of mass mailing and that the DMV had no record in a computer database that I had the plates although the plates weren't available in their on-line database. I didn't want to risk loosing the plates and decided it was time to pay the fees.

There was a time when you could "collect" plates but understandably the DMV now seems to frown on having unused plates "out there" so I would have to surrender the standard issue set of plates on the Tiger before I could register the TIGER plates. I talked with a nice lady at DMV HQ, I guess in Sacramento, who was willing to register the plates sight unseen and I could keep them as a collectible without being used on the car but I ran into a minor snafu and wasn't able to register them through her.

As it turned out I still wasn't happy with the TIGER plate I had all those years and hunted around on the DMV site and found my current XTIGERX plate. It wasn't until about a year later after having these plates on the car and as proud as could be when I noticed that the lettering on the plate wasn't centered, it was crammed all over to one side. Not a big deal but it would look better centered and why wasn't it? The old plate was of the same configuration and had the same number of letters and were centered.

So I decided to see if I could have the plates remade making sure that the lettering was centered this time and I was willing to pay another fee for new plates if need be. I headed off to AAA thinking they would be easier to talk with and were. They were willing to help but I was told that I would probably end up with the same off center lettering that I already had. It was something to do with the letter sizes.

I found out that there is actually an 8th letter space used to help position the lettering on a plate and the AAA tried playing around with different letter position combinations even using half spaces but all came up still off center. I had seen other off-center-lettered plates on cars driving around and thought what a shame they didn't think to use a half space or something to get the lettering centered.

So here I am I had a perfectly good plate for years with letters centered but that wasn't good enough and I tried to "upgrade" to something better and wound up with what I think is a nicer plate but the lettering is off center and very noticeable to me. Oh well I tried.

So be careful, if the plate's appearance is critical to you, you might be better off going to AAA first and have them lay it out to see what it might end up looking like before you order them.

Justin

Censored Vanities

Back in the early 60's, our NH initialed plates were reflectorized. You couldn't smear enough mud on them to hide from the troops. I came accross the UNH campus police w/trooper discussing the removal of a plate "for cause" because one of them had seen the plate in his rear view mirror; "3MTA3" hasn't been seen since. Times don't change? ? ?

XTIGERX - the solution to your uncentered plates may be this.
http://www.licenseplates.tv/replica-california-license-plate-from-1987-to-1992.html. They (and other companies) will make you new plates as long as you can prove you own them. Some of them will not ship to CA but we have friends in other states, right?

BillRo

NOT Tiger related, but a personalized license plate story. In the late 70's my wife wanted the plate RASCAL to commemorate our late kitty. Back then, personalized plates could only have 7 characters/numbers. RASCAL was taken, 0-9 RASCAL were taken, RASCAL 0-9 were taken; in other words, every possible combo of letters and numbers with RASCAL in them was taken.

What's a guy to do? She really wanted those plates. Soooo, I brainstormed and came up with WRASCAL (like Wrangler); not only was it available, but couldn't be duplicated because it took all 7 characters. That plate has been transferred to other cars, and she still wears it today.

Moral of the story- even if the plate you want is taken, there still might be a way...keep punching them into the DMV website and you just might come up with the ONE:--)

Thanks BillRo. Now I'm a cat.

I'm going to look into your suggestion about how I can get my plate fixed. I see the price from your link is "per plate" but hey I only need one. I had another plate mod in mind as well and I see this service can do it also and is included in the price.

With the CA DMV issued plates I had considered cutting a bit off one edge of the plate and sliding the plate over a bit but that elongates the screw holes causing another problem. The issued plate has the first letter jambed against the frame and a 3/4" gap between the last letter and frame.

I'm sure a sharp eyed CHiP would have me pulled over quick for a modified plate. Some other license plate trivia I've learned. Plates front and rear are required. Paint faded plates are not to be repainted. Plates are to be exposed to the weather, no clear plastic cover to keep them clean (some clear covers may be polarized to defeat red-light cameras).

A friend of mine has an older 60's truck with modern 7 digit CA plates; he had them make nice 7 digit black plates with the same numbers for them. As you know black plates only had 6 digits. So far the CHP has not noticed. He keeps the real ones in the glove box.

BillRo

I wonder if CA is getting ready for a plate change?
It appears the state is running out of standard issue plates now releasing 9 ? ? ? ? ? ? plates.
Another color change or an eighth letter?

An eighth digit would be great. Seems like I can come up with lots of 8 digit combos easier than 7.