There are some nice-looking — and illegal — license plates on the roads

Q. Hi Honk: I saw this yesterday, and it’s the first time I’ve seen one. Is this a breast cancer awareness plate?

– Noel Delaspenas, Long Beach

A. Might be – but it isn’t legal.

Noel sent Honk a photo of a rear California license plate, with the number in pink and the background black.

Looks nifty, but …

“Yeah, that’s illegal,” said Jake Sanchez, an officer and spokesman for the California Highway Patrol who was kind enough to look at the shot. “It looks nice. It’s supporting a cause – it’s illegal.”

(There is, by the way, a DMV-issued Breast Cancer Awareness plate that is mostly pink with an illustration of a ribbon.)

Motorists certainly can get cited for changing the color scheme of their plates – or scratching off the paint or using tape to change the appearance or a number or a letter.

How much an offender gets tagged can be tied to intent, Sanchez said. Is the motorist just dressing up the plate, or trying to elude tolls and red-light camera fines? Just changing the reflective sheen alone might fool cameras.

Sanchez and Honk have seen similar illegal plates, yellow on black – copying the popular California 1960s Legacy License Plates issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles. Like the pink-on-black plate, they are neat and appear to have been professionally painted.

Specialty plates come with an extra cost.

Spotting a fake is easy.

On a standard-issue plate, with blue letters on a white background, “California” is in script, in the style of handwriting. So when one is illegally painted, it still retains that font.

But on the DMV-issued Legacy plates, the yellow-on-black ones, “California” is in block letters.

There are legal plates on the roadway, too, that are white and black, sold by Reviver with the DMV’s approval, and powered by battery or wired into the vehicle. They have a matte tone, and instead of a colorful tag in the upper-right corner, the proof of annual registration is placed there digitally, and is either black or white.

Q. What does the Department of Motor Vehicles plan to do after all of the number 9 starting combinations are used up for standard license plates? My logical answer would be to change the number-letter sequence.

– Doris Melnick, Newport Coast

A. This question is a regular visitor in Honk’s electronic mailbag.

The simple answer is what will happen is unclear, but your suggestion is likely on the table in some form.

“We still haven’t decided yet,” said Chris Orrock, a DMV spokesman. “We have plenty of time. They (the DMV specialists) know the forecast of when it will expire, and they will have something in place by then.”

HONKIN’ FACT: That 1963 Ford Falcon Sprint that Honk mentioned here a couple of weeks ago, the one Jimmy Buffett bought in 2002 with 8,578 miles on it and now has only 3,300 more on the odometer, was just sold for $235,000 by GAA Classic Cars in North Carolina. Buffett put a roll bar for his surfboards on the Ford, which, the auction house assured, comes with “his extravagant sound system.” The sale came with a surfboard, a signed guitar and the car’s paperwork he signed.

To ask Honk questions, reach him at honk@ocregister.com. He only answers those that are published. To see Honk online: ocregister.com/tag/honk. Twitter: @OCRegisterHonk

Source: Orange County Register