There’s a strange, liminal space that exists in the vast realm of human endeavor, a space where intent is strong, at least initially, but effort and skill are limited, and the resulting execution, while not successful, nevertheless represents a fascinating balance of forces, combining necessity, inspiration, effort, and apathy, all in a sort of delicate balance. These objects don’t necessarily appear all that often, but when they do, they’re worth scrutinizing, which is precisely what we’re going to do now with this delightfully half-assed hand-made illegal California license plate, as seen by the California Highway Patrol.
The ersatz license plate is bolted to a Nissan Sentra, and I suspect it was born out of a very specific need and a lack of resources, either money or time or both. This is the crucible in which so many ideas are brought into the world, really. We’ve seen hand-made license plates and other official automotive documentation before, but something about this one is really sticking with me.
Here, let’s take a look at it, thanks to this image provided by the CHP:
Also, we should probably just come out and acknowledge that bonkers spare tire setup on the Sentra there. Is that tire just strapped to the trunk lid? With…a seatbelt? Ratchet straps? Is the other end of the strap inside the trunk? I think it’s going through the upper lip of the trunk, around the underside of the trunk lid, and then back through the tire? Why?
I’m getting distracted. We’re here to ponder this license plate, which I’m going to show here compared with a mockup of what an official California license plate of the same registration would look like:
Okay, here’s why I find this DIY plate so fascinating: the maker really had two options available to them. The first option is to make something that is clearly not official, but had the relevant information, and maybe a note like LOST PLATE or something like that. Something that is clearly not trying to deceive, and portrays itself as a temporary placeholder, while giving the relevant registration number. Such a plate may not be strictly legal, but it would likely be more defensible should a cop pull you over.
The other option is to actually attempt to forge the license plate, and to make something that is as indistinguishable as possible from the real thing. A genuine forgery, something that, should it be discovered, would place the owner in some legal trouble, but would very likely not even be discovered at all.
Incredibly, this Sentra owner managed to make something that falls in pretty much the exact middle.
It’s both obviously hand-made, and yet at the same time, it’s clear that some effort was made to make it look like the real thing. The “California” script at the top is actually quite well-rendered, despite the erroneous underline, though even that has a nice break to allow for the descender of the “f” be unimpeded. That part looks great!
The actual registration number looks to be an attempt to emulate the particular typography of a license plate, but from flawed memory, and with no actual sources consulted. Still, something of the “feel” of those glyphs was captured, and the color is fairly accurate.
Then we have the URL on the bottom, again seemingly drawn from a false memory, as the actual one uses only lowercase characters, like how many people think of e.e. cummings.
What was the goal of this DIY license plate maker? To deceive? To just get their registration legible? Again, they’re somehow trying to do both at once, halfway for each, and the result is this strange artifact that exists in this uneasy limbo.
Personally, I would have just given this person a fix-it-ticket and let them go, because I don’t see malice here, just someone trying to make the best of something. Maybe I’d just encourage them to pick a direction and really see it through: recreation or just do their own thing?
Really, I think as long as certain criteria are met, I don’t see a problem with DIY license plates. In India, for example, all the license plates are the responsibility of the car owner to make, however they can, and as a result, when I was there I saw a lot of really quietly lovely hand-painted license plates:
What’s the matter with that? If it’s legible, it’s legible, right? I guess we’d need standards of legibility and reflectivity and all that, but if you can meet the requirements, who cares how you get there.
This is a lot of thinking about something that’s really sort of absurd, but I can’t help it. The uncertain timorousness of this license plate, the resourcefulness and clumsiness, the defiance and capitulation, the whole blurry space it exists in, it haunts me.
I don’t know what to do with this feeling, this combination of respect and disdain, but I’ve sort of enjoyed feeling it. So, DIY-license-plate-making Sentra driver, thank you for that.
Perhaps it’s actually an homage to the genre of outsider art. 😉
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsider_art
And given that the spare was strapped to the trunk lid, I suggest that the artist wanted to draw attention to his or her endeavour, since putting the spare inside the truck or backseat might have resulted in his creation not getting noticed at all.
Ha! I saw a donut spare strapped on to the trunk lid of an Altima with bungee cords yesterday! I almost took a picture but there was someone sitting in the driver’s seat and felt discretion was probably a better idea.
Note it’s on a Nissan.
It looks like it’s from The Simpsons. At least he gets bonus point for the red tag in the top corner.
Fake license plates. Ugh!
I sold my ’01 Jetta TDI to a friend, who bought it for his crazy brother a couple of years ago. This was in Texas, and his brother took the plates off and put a printed “Sovereign Citizen” paper plate in its place. He had no license. He had no insurance. No papers in the car. And when he was pulled over, didn’t comply with the officer. Or officers, when back up arrived. They broke two windows to pull him out of the car and the replacement glass was more than the salvage value of the car.
That car deserved a better end of life. I really liked Greta the Jetta. It was running great when I sold it.
So you regretta selling Greta the Jetta? Sounds like the friend’s bother was a real go-getta.
He was a no-netta. Total conspiracy nut job. I think he’s still in prison, but I don’t live there anymore and I don’t care. What he allowed to happen to that car is a shame and he should not be allowed to have nice things ever again.
Your Jetta definitely deserved betta
Thanks! The brother was a total non-starta. The guy who actually paid for the car was a great guy, who I miss to this day since I don’t live there anymore and he doesn’t know how to email.
Cops really ‘love’ dealing with those idiots.
I can’t even imagine. Dealing with him (the half, maybe full crazy brother) was always an interesting conversation. And I wasn’t trying to get him out of a car. I’m just sorry it happened to a car that was still in really decent shape. Texas cops are a little less subtle than Washington cops, but having lived there, I understand why.
I’ve seen zillions of those police bodycam window-break videos… it’s nice to get a little background on the participants. 😉 Shame about your Jetta TDI. I had a same-gen Golf TDI and had to replace the window regulators three times… getting the door apart to replace the regulator (or window glass) is very time consuming… before doing it myself I got a dealer quote and it was over $500. and this was many years ago. Just the labor charge to replace a couple windows could easily top the book value of the car (especially if post-dieselgate).
My 23-year-long relationship with my VW TDI eventually evolved into a love/hate sort of thing, but yes, no car deserves to be scrapped because an idiot happened to be driving it.
I had the regulator fail and went to picknpull to get one they had 11 of the same car 10 of which the regulators were broken the 11th was missing so it was probably good
The replacement regulator only cost $30-40 from VW or Impex back then, so the cost of the part itself wasn’t bad (and it had a cast aluminum bracket instead of the brittle white plastic one that the factory installed) but of course, the 120+ step replacement process was daunting. I did it myself a total of three times and eventually just sold my TDI a few years ago after owning it for 23 years. Due to my bad back, I really just didn’t want to do it again.
I worked in a glass shop so regulator replacement was fairly easy- I remember the dealer wanted 120$ CDN and I was broke- I ended up getting an aftermarket one that was pretty good
Sorry about your back. I can relate. I only had the driver side front window regulator fail and VWOA had extended the warranty for some period of time in which my car (and its window) fell.
Yes, I think it was originally 5 years and got extended to 7 due to lawsuits/consumer action. Mine was just a bit over 7 years when it first failed of course. Such is my luck.
Well. Sorry about that. I still liked the way that car drove. Maybe a gas one would have been more fun and cheaper in the long run. The injection pump went toes up twice. Once under warranty and the second time not. And they’re not cheap.
Yah, when I first drove an A4 TDI (in 2001) I was so impressed by it inside and out. So much so that I bought one right away (had to go all the way to Texas to get one). But the failures of the window regulators, glovebox hinge, MAF sensor, sticky dashboard, etc… all conspired to make it the last VW I’m likely to ever own: 23 years was long enough.
My next car will likely be Japanese or possibly South Korean.
All the way to Texas. From where? I got mine almost as soon as they came out from a dealership just north of Seattle. It was Texas and 75 mph speed limits that convinced me it was time to let go of it after 16 years.
Now I have a ridiculously over-powered Honda Accord V6. It’s also been very reliable and even fairly economical on the freeway. Not so much in town.
The MPG on the worst tank of diesel I ever got was 38. A lot of cold starts back and forth to drop off and pick up my kid in winter.
But that was a long time ago. My kid is 31. Diesel is more than a dollar a gallon more expensive (most places) than the regular my Honda happily runs on.
And yes, the South Koreans seem to be making very solid and cool-looking cars these days.
I bought mine one year old from a redheaded young lady in Beaumont. I did find a new one here in SoCal, and had secured a ‘promise’ from the dealership that they’d sell it to me for MSRP ($23Kish) but of course when I got out there, they had marked it up $5K above. At that time (2001ish) you couldn’t buy any new TDIs in CA due to CARB rules (or average fleet emissions, or something, I forget) and that one last new one was a leftover. When that fell through, I started watching for used ones on TDIClub.com (aka “Fred’s” …a great site for the TDI faithful) and found the exact same car one year old for $7K less.
Best real (measured) MPG I ever got on a tank was 45 (almost all highway), but since 90% of my driving was urban, it was usually more like low 30s. My TDI was an automatic… a pal with the same model/year but stick always got about 10 MPG more than me.
My current daily is that ’89 Volvo 240 wagon, which has a wonky cam and the AC is always on, so I think it’s getting no more than 10 MPG in the city (originally maybe in the mid-teens). Luckily for me, I don’t drive much/far these days. 🙂
Beaumont? I lived there for six years! That’s where I was living when I sold it. And Fred’s was a great site. I spent a lot of time on it while I owned the Jetta. My username was “Got Diesel?”
I *think* mine was blue909, but at this point, I’m forgetting more than I recall. 😉
Between backs and brains, aging pretty much sucks.
I have had to make many trips down to CA from WA this year, and I have noticed that they are going to have to do something new pretty soon.
The format of the numbers and letters on the plates have been NLLLNNN where N is a number and L is a letter. Well, they are up to 9 on the leading N. What happens when they get to ZZZ on the LLL part?
The plate shown in this article may have been a personalized plate, since it doesn’t match the prevailing plate design.
In my press photography days, I had plates that had two little Ps inside of a triangle to signify I was a press photographer when I did all sorts of illegal things to get to the scene of an accident or some other things that most people were not supposed to do.
I wish I had taken them off my car before it got towed away after being totaled after an unfortunate rear-ending by a Plymouth station wagon. One of my bigger regrets in life, to be honest. They were cool. PP3593. RIP.
I had an uncle who was an ear, nose and throat physician, and he told me that he could get similar MD plates, but doctors were afraid to get them because they thought their cars would get broken into for pharmaceuticals.
Starting next year, they are going to switch formats to a new format NNNLLLN – 123ABC4 for instance
That will maybe feel a little weird to look at, but that makes sense, I guess. ln theory, more letters give you more combinations. Each position can be 1 of 26 vs 1 of 10. Up here in Washington, the format is now LLLNNNN and we’re only into the C leading letter so far, that I’ve seen.
I think he just swapped the W with the 7
My favorite bit is that they drew in one Phillips head screw. In my neck of the woods sad people just cut out a license plate sized piece of cardboard and write, “LOST TAG” on it.
People around me don’t even bother with that. Just a vacant space where a plate should go.
Since everyone has already made the “lol of course it’s a Nissan” joke I wanted to add something-we just had a new Rogue as a rental car over the holiday weekend and you know what? It wasn’t bad at all. The interior materials punched above their weight, the power was adequate and it felt faster than it was because of the low end torque, it had plenty of space, and I didn’t even notice the CVT.
Is it a GOOD car? Eh. Probably not. But I expected to be woefully underwhelmed/made a bunch of jokes at the car’s expense but then had to drive it and was thoroughly whelmed. It’s crazy how much basic cars have improved over the last decade. I also beat the snot out of it in true Nissan fashion and I couldn’t get the thing lower than the high 20s MPG wise.
The steering felt like it was connected to a bowl of pudding, and I was certainly self conscious throwing the keys to a valet at a restaurant where a bright green Huracan was parked out front…but honestly it was a totally fine car. Maybe we’re too hard on *gets smashed by Altima doing 90 in a 65*
A couple of years ago I drove a Murano rental 1200 miles around Alaska. It was whelming. Had no major complaints with it but it was otherwise unremarkable. I felt the same about the Altima I drove through Rocky Mountain NP and Pikes Peak in CO a couple of years before that.
Was it a convertible? With paint protecting cladding on half of it?
We had a rented Altima a few months ago. It was nothing special, but I didn’t mind it at all—I liked driving it more than Kia K4/K5 rentals I’ve also had earlier this year. The seats were super comfy, too.
The fun thing I love about this site, is that an article about fake license plates turns into a thread about rental cars and specifically Nissans.
I rented a recent Sentra a month ago and was also similarly whelmed. I don’t know how current ones hold up over 10 years, but it was really decent to drive. I really do hope Nissan survives to give the others competition. It was a lot better than the Corolla I rented two weeks prior, for more money. (The vagaries of demand pricing, I guess.)
And you’re right! I didn’t notice the CVT either. It didn’t drone. They used to. I rented several Altimas (at random, not by choice) a few years ago that were awful in that regard.
I have a ’17 Accord with <70K miles on it (and I love it!), so unless someone hits me hard and totals it, I won’t be looking for a replacement. But that Sentra was a pleasant surprise and rental. And a lot cheaper than a new Accord.
My company just picked up a Sentra from an auction for office use, practically new. Drives pretty nice. Adaptive cruise works pretty good. Wish I had that on my car.
I didn’t use the cruise control, but everything else seemed pretty well sorted out. Not a lot of road noise, efficient on fuel, decent ride, didn’t corner like crap and didn’t have any issues getting up to freeway speed. What more do you want from a rental. Or maybe even your daily driver?
+1. I rented what likely was the same generation Rogue. It was a neutrally meh experience (except the audio, which was shite.) For such a large car, with all the features expected in a modern vehicle and starting below $30K, it cannot be criticized in good faith. It’s also so much quieter than the shitbox Mitsu Mirage I just rented last month.
The Rogue deserves restrained praise for offering so much for relatively little money.
Thanks for this Nsane… it needs to be said. Though Nissans have a rep of being driven by those with poor credit who are most likely to flee a DUI checkpoint or shoplifting adventure, they’re not all absolutely awful.
I saw inside a newish Sentra sedan recently, and TBH, I though it was kind of nice in there: sort of simple/basic yes, but that was a good thing IMO. And the seats/dash/doorcards looked decently made. I haven’t driven a recent Nissan CVT lately… I probably should since you’re not the first person to say that they’re not as bad as they once were.
I’ve driven a 15 year old Rogue and it was an absolute shitbox/the CVT was very CVT-ey. The current Rogue had a nice interior even in the base spec and I probably wouldn’t know it had a CVT unless you told me. It’s a fine car. If someone close to me wanted one I certainly wouldn’t try to talk them out of it.
Just recently in the article about the average car price exceeding $50k, I think there were complaints about car companies for not offering inexpensive sedans.
Then in an article with an inexpensive sedan, a Nissan Sentra, we’re hard on the car and the owner for being cheap.
They’re fine cars for what they are.
If you can afford slightly more, sure get a Corolla or a Mazda 3 or something similar.
But they’re fine.
See my previous comment above. I could be perfectly happy with the Sentra I recently rented. It even had a moon roof!
The creators of the 510, the 720 pickup and the 240Z do not deserve all the hatred.
The 20-teens Altima was not my favorite rental, but also not my least favorite.
Not notice the CVT? How could you not? You didn’t notice the lack of awful, horrible, jarring, nasty shifting? You didn’t notice the wonderful power delivery afforded by the CVT? You didn’t notice the fantastic fuel economy at the pump?
You are so true to your cause.
Pro tip: just roll without plates on your Nissan. Like 3% of all vehicles I see whilst driving don’t even bother with plates. It’s why I can’t support traffic cameras. I saw some temp tags from 2021 on a jeep at work last month.
I saw a new Toyota Hilux in Vegas today with no plates! I have no idea where it was from but I definitely did a double take, way cool.
Yeah, in a Nissan I think that would work as it’s expected. The literal one fucking time I rolled my 85 LTD without current tags I got popped by the CHP. Thankfully I had a one day permit that I hadn’t used yet.
After I sheared the plastic plate bolts off my Fiata swapping plates I didn’t make it the 2 miles to the hardware store without being pulled over by an eagle-eyed deputy going the other way in traffic. Though he admitted he wanted to check out the car as much as find out why I had no plates on it. Had old and new on the seat beside me, so no harm, no foul, nice chat, and on my way.
On the other hand, bought a used Saab 9-5 in Oklahoma, a state that doesn’t do temp tags at all. Drove all the way back to Maine that way, including my buddy who was with me getting pulled over for speeding in Upstate NY. The trooper didn’t say a word about no plates, but couldn’t wrap her pretty little head around why we were going through *NY State* to get from OKLAHOMA to MAINE. Obviously, she was not a geography major.
Pretty little headed cops are kind of hot. I’ve known a couple. But not in the Biblical sense. Just fun to flirt with or be flirted with by. It went both directions, but not all the way. And that was a looooooong time ago.
I prefer a strapping young lad of a trooper with a big gun. 😉
I don’t flirt with strapping young lads. Or their dads
You should give it a shot. You might like it, and unless you do, you will have no idea. I tried women – the hardware is fun to play with, but the software – eeesh.
And of course, if you end up liking both, bam – doubled chances for dates! ROFL.
Lol. I like the hardware better that way. And the software varies.
Not all that much really. They are nearly all, IMHO, batshit insane. It’s just a matter of how deeply the insanity is buried. Some have it right out there, some it’s buried deeply enough to fake you out.
Maybe it’s a statement about me. I got taken in by the hardware and then the software became evident.
And it’s not like my hardware was that impressive. So, not bragging. Adequate enough to have a now 31-year-old kid.
LOL, that’s true for most of us. I definitely did NOT get that particular stereotypical black gene from Dad, just the perma-tan.
Slightly scary to think that if I had knocked up one of my college experiments, I would have a kid who is damned near 40 now. Yikes. But I was never brave\stupid enough to not take extra precautions given it was very much the AIDS era.
Amusingly, my high-school girlfriend and I came out to each other when we got together after college. Explained a LOT. Those were very different times, I can’t even imagine being out and proud in high school. I was barely out in college.
I get why lesbians are lesbians and gay guys are gay.
Given how most men are, if I was a woman, I’d probably be a lesbian.
And there’s the old joke about “I’m a lesbian trapped in a man’s body.” Rings true.
And I also know how to be friends with guys. Gay or not.
My problem is that I tried to rescue damaged women. Four times.
And I have come to the realization that I can’t fix people or rescue them from their own issues.
I wish I had learned that sooner. OTH, I’m not sure what I would have done with my spare time.
And I have a son I love dearly out of one of the attempts. His mom and I are very amicably divorced.
That’s great that you have a good relationship with your ex – best thing for the kiddo. My best friend is the same with his. Other friends practically have the War of the Roses going on, with the poor kids stuck in the middle. Not cool.
For sure you can’t fix people. I tried with my idiot brother and sister-in-law to very little effect. Though oddly enough, once the financial umbilical cord was finally cut, they are managing to make it on their own without the family gravy train.
You don’t need plates, or current tabs at all in Seattle, there’s no enforcement of any traffic laws whatsoever.
(and I say this as a big time lefty!)
Yeah, sure.
Officers probably like to let them roll that way, so, if later, they want to stop and hassle them, they have a reason to pull them over, kinda like the ‘broken taillight’.
I mean…you’re not wrong lol. Admittedly as another lefty, I’m actually fine with that, as SPD has a poor history of handling traffic stops appropriately (see DivestSPD for citations). We are doing an okay job overall of traffic design for safety here, and providing decent transit options, and I think that’s having a much stronger effect on traffic safety than enforcement would anyways.
Of course, as soon as you go into Snohomish County/Marysville, better have those tags on and ready. They don’t play lol, the amount of cops sitting around with nothing better to do than line up on the side of I5 with lights flashing as a show of force on a weekend…
Same goes for south of Tacoma into Thurston County (and Olympia in particular), I see folks getting pulled for tags pretty regularly.
Tacoman, here… You are not kidding about Olympia! Going through there on the way to see my mom and brother in CA, I just lock the cruise control on 55. It has to be the most heavily patrolled stretch of road in the entire state.
Funny story though in Oregon 20+ years ago. I was doing maybe 57-58 heading south on I-5 in my Saab 9000 with Washington plates and a Camry with California plates eased past me maybe 1 mph faster and got pulled over by the Oregon State Police. I thought maybe because of the CA plates. But the driver was an attractive woman, so who knows. Which I get is creepy. Driving while pretty is not a crime or reason to be pulled over.
Whenever I see a Hilux in LA it’s got Mexican plates on it. I presume LA cops don’t routinely pull them over. Wish I had a Mexican pal who’d let me use their address to register a car, so I could buy a Hilux Champ and have a chance of getting away with it.
It’s literally the ONLY new car that I actually WANT right now, and WOULD just pay cash for. Toyota also still sells the Yaris hatchback in Mexico, and that’s a nice little car too. 🙂
I bet ICE will start pulling them over.
Considering the geographical area it was probably from Mexico, although it was strange to see it without the plates. I see plenty of cars with foreign plates on them I think it’s temporarily legal if you drive across the border legally.
Yes, it’s legal to drive a Mexican-plated car into the U.S. and to keep driving it here for a certain amount of time (not sure how long, might vary by state) and I also assume the car has to have valid (for the U.S.) insurance the same way that U.S. cars have to do in Mexico.
Plateless cars attract police attention everywhere.
Our state got a new plate design a couple of yrs ago.
Still see cars with the old plate driving around.
I’d probably be cuffed and on the ground if I did that, but that’s just the way my luck rolls.
Old plates are probably still valid as long as the car stays registered. Every locality is different though.
Agreed. Counting the themed plates that the CA DMV offers, there are multiple colors of CA plates: blue on white is the most common, yellow on black is old (or new ‘heritage’ or whatever the DMV calls it), etc… As long as the registration sticker in the top right corner is valid/up to date, the plate is fine, even if it’s very old.
The underline was the clear giveaway…
There was recently a clapped out RV camping in various places around the area- including in front of the fire station. Upon closer inspection, the year sticker in the upper right corner was just a red piece of tape and had no 2025 printed on it. I guess that’s one way to try to avoid getting hassled over expired registration. I can see how it would work from a distance.
They use plate readers here. I got my wife pulled over because I put the renewal sticker on the wrong 2007 car…ooops! She still gives me grief over that.
I think going serif was his big mistake – it jumps out at a glance that something’s amiss.
Speaking of which, has Torch done a piece on the rare serif car name/trim badges yet? I can’t remember. Every time I see a GTI, I think he should or maybe has.
Yes, it does!
And TIL the actual name for the descender – thank you for that 🙂
Was sitting behind “some genius” with a Califoria plate a few years back:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CdjSKAaPeJs/?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==
That’s hilarious.
Don’t you mean “some geius“?
i just realized that with AI it will be very easy to find an exact match for your car in the same color in your state find it’s tag number and then have someone like send cut send make you a counterfeit license plate that will be virtually undetectable (unless you got pulled over and also have to provide your “proof” of registration)
“[…]the resulting execution, while not successful, nevertheless represents a fascinating balance of forces, combining necessity, inspiration, effort, and apathy, all in a sort of delicate balance.”
For some reason I was reminded of an unusually talented and successful counterfeiter, Emanuel Ninger, who actually *drew* his bills by hand; he was ultimately caught after 18 (!!) years because he didn’t use waterproof inks so when he paid a bartender with one of his own bills it got wet and the ink started to run: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanuel_Ninger
There’s a surprisingly fascinating book from the 1950s about counterfeiters titled Money of Their Own: The Great Counterfeiters by Murray Teigh Bloom. The author admitted to having an admiration for Ninger and his skills; IIRC, he actually owned the marble table used by Ninger for his, ahem, artwork.
Bloom also noted that by definition we would never ever know about the most successful counterfeiters simply because their works have never ever been detected.
Remarkable! Didn’t know about him, but J.S.G. Boggs popped up for me.
https://share.google/BAouqwb0Eb1CkpKZq
Oh, and on a programming note Jason! Why are your pop up videos so damn persistently popping up? And as I have been deleting cookies, web history, on a much more regular basis, have noticed this site’s count of such has dramatically increased about 2 weeks ago. I wipe my computer multiple times a day now, and notice these things.
Yeah, just wiped, it’s mostly, or all cached images and files from incessant auto play videos. Grrrr.
Usually this level of creativity is reserved for the Altima owner
Way back in college I worked at a pizza shop that also sold beer for takeout. A kid came in to buy some and presented a fake ID that was very obviously a laminated Polaroid of him standing in front of a drivers license mockup he made on his wall (This was before digital cameras). As a fellow 20 year old, I pretended everything looked cool and sold him the beer.
I made a fake ID like that once!
Did you go to Penn State? We are the same age.
It’s all a blur.
If you did, your graphics skills have improved since the early 90’s.
My friend went there for one year and got one of those IDs.
Mr. Papagiorgio!
It’s Pennsylvania, not Arizona!
Not an uncommon method of making fake IDs in the 80s and 90s (or so I’ve heard).
One of my college friends had same setup for our state.
My cousin had one of those fake IDs. I had the gift of looking and dressing older than I was so walking into the right bars with the right attitude at the right time usually did the trick even at age 17.
Freshman year in the dorms at UC San Diego, I was the guy who had the car. A fellow dorm mate already had a significantly receded hairline. We would run down to La Jolla every Friday and pick up a case of Miller High Life for the weekend. He never got carded. I can’t imagine how bald he is now.
And, wow, looking at Google Maps, the campus has changed a lot since then (mid-70s)!
Thanks for dusting off some dusty memory cells. And as a 2001 Jetta TDI owner, so given your username, we might have something in common. The VW memories are just that. I now own a ’17 Accord which has been a lot less interesting/annoying.
I think that random tire being held by hopes and dreams is more concerning than the arts n crafts license plate lmao.
Just returning the borrowed spare tire back to his brother who owns an Altima.
I don’t think that’s even a valid CA registration number combo. I just checked this plate on the CA smog check history site and it doesn’t come up.
Standard issue plates are in the 9ABC123 format (and they’re about to run out of available numbers so they’re going to flip the sequence backwards soon). The black/yellow standard issue legacy plates only have 6 digits. Commercial plates use a different sequence. This almost looks like a HAM call sign but it has too many digits too. So I think it’s a completely made up number.
I have been seeing a lot of custom/wrapped CA plates lately, which is also illegal. In fact while trying to find a photo of a CA legacy plate, I ran into this post by the SDPD reminding everyone that it’s illegal.
This was my first thought.
The DMV is running is running out a numbers and will soon start using four letters but I don’t recall the format.
In California? No, they’re just reversing the sequence.
The current sequence started as 1AAA000 in 1980 and will run out at 9ZZZ999 soon. After that it’ll become 000AAA1, then 100AAA1, 200AAA1, and so on.
Commercial (including pickup truck) plates were originally 1A00000 and ran out at 9Z99999 a few years ago, so they flipped it to 00000A1. Here’s an example.
Ham radio call signs would normally be 4-6 characters.
More questions: if this person was trying to replicate a lost plate, did they have a vanity plate? Because the standard sequence on California car license plates is number-letter-letter-letter-number-number-number, and this sequence clearly does not match. If it is a vanity plate, what is the message buried within W7JCO38?
Yeah, definitely not a “replacement” for a real missing plate. Half a point for getting the correct number of digits?
Shockingly, here in Oakland, it seems like maybe every fourth car has fake or entirely missing plates, but most of the fakes aren’t trying to look like metal plates, they’re trying (usually very badly) to look like the temporary tags issued by dealers.
That’s the standard play in DC as well – fake paper temp tags.
Houston as well. Fake paper tags are a big business in Texas.
I’d say getting the number of digits correct is worth something.
In Colorado, the move is to just rip off the portion of the temp tag that has the year in the expiry date, and keep driving.
Way to bust Nissan stereotypes there