front plate issue??
Discussion
this is nicked from the TVR forum but:-
i have a modded esprit and the plate is so much of a
after thought on the esprit.
what i say is:-
"MOTORBIKES"? they dont have front plates, so whats the difference.
are there any police on the board that can give the exact law and the
fine situation, i do hear having nothing is better than something dodgy.
i have a "spaced" plate on the rear but police have been ok so far with
it as i dont think its that bad (touch wood).
im considering running mine without a plate on the front, what is the
law in the states, you guys dont have front plates do you?
i have a modded esprit and the plate is so much of a
after thought on the esprit.
what i say is:-
"MOTORBIKES"? they dont have front plates, so whats the difference.
are there any police on the board that can give the exact law and the
fine situation, i do hear having nothing is better than something dodgy.
i have a "spaced" plate on the rear but police have been ok so far with
it as i dont think its that bad (touch wood).
im considering running mine without a plate on the front, what is the
law in the states, you guys dont have front plates do you?
Some states do not require front plates like Florida.
In my state of Minnesota we have front plates.
I have never run the Lotus with front plates and have not had trouble.
Our law states front plates to displayed in the front. It does specify that the plate be attached on the front bumper, only that it is displayed in the front. Technically the front of the car is anywhere forward on the middle of the car. So we may choose to display the plate on the front windscreen above the instrument binnicale. Many use suction cups to hold the plate on the windscreen in this position.
I just stow the front plate under the car seat and when pulled over just flip it on the dash. I also carry a print out of the statues that states the plate be displayed on the front of the car. So I am in compliance when the plate is on the dash.
After a car is 20 years old it is allowed to run with only the rear plates as it is considered a collector car so many Esprit are already exempt from displaying the front plate.
I'm sure your laws are written differently than ours are. I suppose you will have to see an exact wording of the local laws.
In my state of Minnesota we have front plates.
I have never run the Lotus with front plates and have not had trouble.
Our law states front plates to displayed in the front. It does specify that the plate be attached on the front bumper, only that it is displayed in the front. Technically the front of the car is anywhere forward on the middle of the car. So we may choose to display the plate on the front windscreen above the instrument binnicale. Many use suction cups to hold the plate on the windscreen in this position.
I just stow the front plate under the car seat and when pulled over just flip it on the dash. I also carry a print out of the statues that states the plate be displayed on the front of the car. So I am in compliance when the plate is on the dash.
After a car is 20 years old it is allowed to run with only the rear plates as it is considered a collector car so many Esprit are already exempt from displaying the front plate.
I'm sure your laws are written differently than ours are. I suppose you will have to see an exact wording of the local laws.
Mate ive looked into this, in the UK you DO have to have a front plate, it has to be legally spaced & thats the law.
However, i havnt had a front plate for years, been followed by BIB (actually the only time i did have a plate was for Britball because i knew we would be high profile) but ive never been pulled once. I never leave the car on the road so i wont be unlicky & cop a ticket if a picky copper drives by. I think you wont be pulled for not having a front plate, your more likely to be pulled for speeding or something & then they point to the plate & add that to the list...
Your prize if you do get caught is £30 & told to fix it, (as long as you dont wind the copper up)...NO POINTS.
But dont tell everyone as then we will all run no front plates & then they will clamp down!
However, i havnt had a front plate for years, been followed by BIB (actually the only time i did have a plate was for Britball because i knew we would be high profile) but ive never been pulled once. I never leave the car on the road so i wont be unlicky & cop a ticket if a picky copper drives by. I think you wont be pulled for not having a front plate, your more likely to be pulled for speeding or something & then they point to the plate & add that to the list...
Your prize if you do get caught is £30 & told to fix it, (as long as you dont wind the copper up)...NO POINTS.
But dont tell everyone as then we will all run no front plates & then they will clamp down!
mint!!!
thanks guys, and i belive the law in uk is written like that
aswell,,,displayed on the front of the car, this was also a idea of
mine, if the copper stops you, he will stop from behind after looking
at the bumper, so keep plate close and put in the window. then again the rear plate is also illegally spaced but never had a issue yet, as its only on space thats moved.
thanks guys, and i belive the law in uk is written like that
aswell,,,displayed on the front of the car, this was also a idea of
mine, if the copper stops you, he will stop from behind after looking
at the bumper, so keep plate close and put in the window. then again the rear plate is also illegally spaced but never had a issue yet, as its only on space thats moved.
at least the european plates actually fit the front bumper. our plates hang past the bumper and block the radiator, i don't have a front plate, but if it ever came to legal confrontation, the law states front plates are mandatory. i wish they would allow motorcycle sized plates up front. i tried propping a car plate up in the window, but it blocks my view and even falls off after a few corners at speed. seems like a major safety hazard, and it's very irresponsible for the department of motor vehicles to even suggest it. if it causes me an accident, you can bet they won't accept any responsibility. i like the old square format english number plates of yore.
Hi All,
I live in Germany (some of you might know ;o) and we also (like in the UK) have to wear front plates. On my Esprit V8 I have no front plate for two years now, because I dont like the looks with a front plate. I have never had any trouble with the cops so far .....
Knock on wood
Marcus
>> Edited by Paula&Marcus on Tuesday 14th March 19:04
>> Edited by Paula&Marcus on Tuesday 14th March 19:05
I live in Germany (some of you might know ;o) and we also (like in the UK) have to wear front plates. On my Esprit V8 I have no front plate for two years now, because I dont like the looks with a front plate. I have never had any trouble with the cops so far .....
Knock on wood Marcus
>> Edited by Paula&Marcus on Tuesday 14th March 19:04
>> Edited by Paula&Marcus on Tuesday 14th March 19:05
Strictly speaking in the UK the front plate has to be VERTICAL and FLAT as well: there's a 'grandfather's rights' type of situation for the E-Type Jag and one or two other cars where they traditionally ran with an adhesive plate that follows the curve of the bonnet... but you won't get away with it for long on any other car.
Put it this way: I had an adhesive plate on a '69 Spitfire bonnet and got pulled in '82 for it, so if you think it's only a recent idea, think again...
Apart from the correct spacing, typeface and height of characters, there must also be a minimum border around the characters.
How so many muppets get away with blatantly illegal plates is a mystery to me. You'd think Plod would have a field day at least once in a while...
Put it this way: I had an adhesive plate on a '69 Spitfire bonnet and got pulled in '82 for it, so if you think it's only a recent idea, think again...
Apart from the correct spacing, typeface and height of characters, there must also be a minimum border around the characters.
How so many muppets get away with blatantly illegal plates is a mystery to me. You'd think Plod would have a field day at least once in a while...
deecee said:
Excuse my ignorance, but I always wondered...
In Britain, you are given a plate number and then its your responsibility to buy the letters and numbers in the correct size & font and stick them to your bumper?
Er... well it used to be, but since we are now plagued by number-plate reading cameras, the idiots in 'power' have introduced new legislation that says you can only get the plates made by a supplier, once you have satisfied them with documents that you own the vehicle (otherwise we'd all have false plates!) AND the supplier has to put their trading details on the bottom of the plate in case a Police officer wants to question anything about the font, spacing, colour etc etc.
In other words they can be prosecuted for supplying non-conforming plates. Bloody amazing how many cars you still see with glaring infringements though... What a great country this is.
wedg1e said:
the idiots in 'power' have introduced new legislation that says you can only get the plates made by a supplier, once you have satisfied them with documents that you own the vehicle (otherwise we'd all have false plates!)
We have specialist plate suppliers in my state also that do nothing but make plates.
Only thing we call these people convicts.
It is one of the things these people do while guests of our prision system.
deecee said:
Do the letters and numbers actually mean anything or are they just issued in series?
In 1963 a new system was started from which you could tell the year the car was first registered and the area office that issued the number. So for example ADC 1A: the 'DC' tells you it was my local area, the last A indicates 1963, 1 to 999 is a series number as is the first A. When (if) they got to ADC 999A thy would start at BDC 1A and so on.
Now to avoid confusion with misread letters they avoided I,Q, U and Z, so where the system should have lasted 26 years it ran out of 'year' letters in 1982.
So they started in reverse and issued A1 ADC... but now they changed the A of ADC to a random letter just for the hell of it, so in 1983 they may have used MDC and say SDC. In 1984 FDC and YDC and so on... reasoning that no office could issue enough plates to use A to Z before DC. This became a validation character and supposeldy helped stop the use of false plates. Yeah right.
Anyway, slightly less than 22 years later that system too was changed, this time to get away from 'number plate snobbery' where people would deliberately wait until 1st August when the next year letter was issued (why? God only knows) and the motor industry as a result had a slump in sales during the summer as nobody was buying new cars - they wanted the 'latest plate', sad b@stards. The government claimed it was partly to do with European standardisation but since they're all different as well, that was complete bollox.
So our current system is as MW04 MBT for the first six months of the year and then MW54 MBT for the remainder. There's still some location information contained in there but it doesn't seem to be as readable as before.
Needless to say it has always been a national sport to try to get a 'personalised' plate, where your initials or name or some other word appears on there.
A popular combination since 1983 has been B19 *** or B16 *** because it's supposed to say BIG and your initials: again how sad can you get?
Historically it was almost impossible to get rude words on a plate as the issuing offices would check for certain combinations, but a couple escaped the net, especially where issued pre-1963. PEN 15 is a common one, H14 KEW (spaced as H1 4 KEW) another. Various forms of W*NKER have appeared (though why you'd want to state that you were one on your car is a mystery
) - there's one near me on a sad little hatchback: W41 KGR, with the 1 and G chopped about... Sometimes it is funny: one guy bought UR 02 SLO for his TVR, and so on.
Basically there is now a central issuing office (a Govt. department of course) and they have twigged that there's money changing hands for particular plates, so they want a slice and now they hold certain number/letter combinations to ransom... sorry, auction to the highest bidder.
Personally I wouldn't pay for the dubious privilege: my TVR came with a plate that has the letters TVR on it but it was some sad tosser who paid £250 for the honour.
My company van, ironically, has EN as the first two letters, so I have got my name on my plate, sort of...
Just to add further to the confusion, Northern Ireland plates used to follow 3-letters-4-numbers instead, like AOI 8933. Things is, they also allowed Z, so it's possible to have say DAZ ****. NOw you can drive a NI-plated car on the UK mainland, so people called Darren like to have DAZ...
Just off the coast we have the independent islands of Jersey and Guernsey: they're so small that they restrict the numbers of cars on them and hence there aren't many plates issued. For Jersey it's J 12345 and Guernsey simply has 12345!
Way back in the mists of time it was (allegedly) possible if you had enough money (and let's face it pre-1920s you had to be bloody rich to buy a car anyway) to persuade the issuing office to give you a particular plate: where these plates still exist they can fetch stupid money. A1 is supposedly the oldest registration plate in existence anywhere.
You can't get HRH on a plate because that might imply you were royalty (although even the Royals don't have HRH on their cars for obvious reasons).
Just off the coast we have the independent islands of Jersey and Guernsey: they're so small that they restrict the numbers of cars on them and hence there aren't many plates issued. For Jersey it's J 12345 and Guernsey simply has 12345!
Way back in the mists of time it was (allegedly) possible if you had enough money (and let's face it pre-1920s you had to be bloody rich to buy a car anyway) to persuade the issuing office to give you a particular plate: where these plates still exist they can fetch stupid money. A1 is supposedly the oldest registration plate in existence anywhere.
You can't get HRH on a plate because that might imply you were royalty (although even the Royals don't have HRH on their cars for obvious reasons).
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