Bumper stickers and license plates

[BlueTrain]

Bumper stickers have been around as long as I can remember. Sometimes they are funny, sometimes they are arrogant and sometimes they are vulgar and stupid. Same with license plates, now that vanity plates are more common. These seem to be just an American thing. I don't recall having seen any overseas, not even a dealer's sticker, although in the U.K., the dealer's name is on the license plate.

I haven't seen "BR-549" on a license plate yet but I'm sure someone has it. I once saw a Honda Odyssey with an interesting tag. It's been a while and I don't remember if it said "Homer" or "Iliad." Either one is clever, if obvious. Another vehicle's tag said "Blind."

The other day I saw one that made my day: It said "Bitte ein Bit."

 

[MisterCairo]

You can get personalized plates in Canada, too. On our family vehicle is my beloved "WITHNAIL" for my favourite film, and I have a set of "PMARWOOD" that I'll be registering for my car soon.

P Marwood is the closest I could get to simply "MARWOOD", the script name for the "I" character in Withnail & I. P is for Peter, which is a mis-heard reference in the film. There's a line "He's just auditioned for rep" that some mis-hear for "Pete's just auditioned for rep".

That's my plate story. I don't do bumper stickers though. And in Canada, the plates actually belong to the government, so no dealer names on them, they do sometimes use frames for advertising, but not on ours, we said no thanks.

Any other fun plates out there?

 

[BobHufford]

I used to drive a VW Bus and I work for Bass Pro Shops.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Bumper stickers as stickers are a postwar thing -- but as far back as the 1920s, there were lick-and-stick gummed windshield stickers and metal license-plate toppers with which you could proclaim your political affiliation, your allegience to a sports team, or announce the tourist spots you'd visited.

There were also bumper "signs," which were cardboard rectangles about the size of a modern bumper sticker with punched holes in the corner for mounting to your bumper with thin wire. It was the thing to do to nail these to the inside of your garage door after they'd been on your car for a little while -- because they were thin flimsy cardboard, they disintegrated quickly in the rain, so if you want to save them as a souvenir you wouldn't keep them on your car for long. Bumper signs co-existed with stickers thru the 1950s, but changes in car bumper design made it difficult to loop the wire around for display, and they faded out in the 1960s.

And widely popular in the 1920s and early 1930s, there were souvenir spare tire covers. These were made of cheap oilcloth and either hand painted or screen-printed with various promotional images or slogans.

As with cardboard bumper signs, the fact that these were made of such cheap, flimsy material means that very very few survive today. Which is a pity, because of all the "car personalization" gimmicks of the time, they were the most colorful and impressive.

 

[BlueTrain]

I hadn't expected to learn so much just in the first couple of replies but then, I know so little.

I recall leaving the state fair (of West Virginia) to find bumper stickers tied onto car bumpers once. I think it was the state fair. I don't recall seeing any bumper stickers when I've been overseas. I definitely don't recall seeing any stickers about colleges, the way one does here. Here in Virginia, one can apparently get a vanity tag with a college logo from another state, which just doesn't seem right to me.

I never sported a sticker that told the world where I went to school but when I was actually a student there, there was a requirement that your car be registered on campus. All it amounted to was a little sticker about three inches square with a number on it. Then someone brought up the question of what it was good for, which was nothing. It didn't give you parking privileges anywhere. So after that, they stopped registering student-owned vehicles.

Once in a while you might see a vehicle with it's back end literally covered with stickers proclaiming all of their beliefs that can be expressed in a 4"x12" space. Apparently what they believe in most of all is bumper stickers.

I don't recall when states stopped issuing new plates when you renewed your registration but saving the old tags for decorating your garage, if you had one, used to be the thing to do. And so, another tradition bit the dust.

 

[2jakes]

Home-made signs.

 

[BlueTrain]

Some traditions persist.

 

[2jakes]

Dusty window art!

My television news vehicle .
My reporter has a way of expressing her point of view.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Plates were reused repeatedly during the war years due to the metal shortages -- many states kept the 1942 plates into 1943 or 1944, with windshield stickers used for validation in the new year. Plates were not especially well made during the Era -- the paint was poor quality, and some colors, especially red, tended to fade badly from the sun over just a year of use, so using a plate more than a year might have left it barely legible by the time it was replaced. I have a set of 1941 plates on my Plodge that I found in an old barn, in mint condition, many years ago -- but after just three years on the car, they'd faded so badly I had to completely repaint them.

Reflectorized paint didn't become popular until the 1950s.

Here in Maine, plates ceased to replaced annually in 1948. Plates thereafter had slots punched into the area next to the date to allow attachment of color-coded aluminum tabs stamped with the new year. The base plate would be kept in use for several years at a time. Stickers replaced the aluminum tabs in 1969, and the interval between replacing the base plates got longer and longer. We've been using our current plates for seventeen years -- mine, in fact, are still the actual plates I was first issued in 1999, transferred from car to car.

 

[MisterCairo]

Home-made signs.

Honk if you're lousy at grammar! Does UWF offer refunds???

 

[MisterCairo]

Plates were reused repeatedly during the war years due to the metal shortages -- many states kept the 1942 plates into 1943 or 1944, with windshield stickers used for validation in the new year. Plates were not especially well made during the Era -- the paint was poor quality, and some colors, especially red, tended to fade badly from the sun over just a year of use, so using a plate more than a year might have left it barely legible by the time it was replaced. I have a set of 1941 plates on my Plodge that I found in an old barn, in mint condition, many years ago -- but after just three years on the car, they'd faded so badly I had to completely repaint them.

Reflectorized paint didn't become popular until the 1950s.

Here in Maine, plates ceased to replaced annually in 1948. Plates thereafter had slots punched into the area next to the date to allow attachment of color-coded aluminum tabs stamped with the new year. The base plate would be kept in use for several years at a time. Stickers replaced the aluminum tabs in 1969, and the interval between replacing the base plates got longer and longer. We've been using our current plates for seventeen years -- mine, in fact, are still the actual plates I was first issued in 1999, transferred from car to car.

In Ontario, we stopped the annual plate replacement in 1972. Each year for over a decade alternated between white background and blue lettering, white letters on blue, with the year prominently imprinted.

Well into the 1980s, once the slogan changed from "Ontario Keep It Beautiful" to "Ontario Yours to Discover", you could tell how long many folks had kept their plates, because they still used the 1972 imprint. We changed to those stickers you place in the corner.

 

[BlueTrain]

Okay, when do you suppose license plates were first required?

 

[Fading Fast]

...There were also bumper "signs," which were cardboard rectangles about the size of a modern bumper sticker with punched holes in the corner for mounting to your bumper with thin wire. It was the thing to do to nail these to the inside of your garage door after they'd been on your car for a little while -- because they were thin flimsy cardboard, they disintegrated quickly in the rain, so if you want to save them as a souvenir you wouldn't keep them on your car for long. Bumper signs co-existed with stickers thru the 1950s, but changes in car bumper design made it difficult to loop the wire around for display, and they faded out in the 1960s.

.

Amazing that it was bumper design and not the insanity of making a sign for a car's bumper out of cardboard that led to their demise. It seems that the idea for a cardboard bumper sign would have been shot down in the design phase or cancelled after one year when they all started to fall apart.

...And widely popular in the 1920s and early 1930s, there were souvenir spare tire covers. These were made of cheap oilcloth and either hand painted or screen-printed with various promotional images or slogans.

As with cardboard bumper signs, the fact that these were made of such cheap, flimsy material means that very very few survive today. Which is a pity, because of all the "car personalization" gimmicks of the time, they were the most colorful and impressive.

I have seen these, but very rarely and now I know why. I just assumed not many were made, I never thought about their materials being the reason they weren't still around. And, yes, they are very cool.

 

[2jakes]

Honk if you're lousy at grammar! Does UWF offer refunds???

Only if “your Horney”

 

[LizzieMaine]

Another colorful car item that was once ubiquitous but is now extinct is the cardboard radiator cover, used in cold weather to help a car warm up faster.

These were popular giveaways at gas stations, garages, and auto-supply stores in cold-weather areas of the country. Ads for brands of gasoline were most common, but other types of advertising also appeared from time to time. You'd just shove it in front of your radiator grille, betwen the bumper and the nose of the car, and leave it in place until the engine was warmed up. Many millions of these were given away in the twenties, thirties and forties, but they don't often turn up today. They were made of thick waxed cardboard, so they were more durable than bumper signs, but there was nothing to hold them securely in place if you drove the car with one in position, and it wasn't uncommon for them to get jostled or blown off, and it wasn't uncommon to see their remnants sticking out of dirty snowbanks after a cold snap.

 

[Fading Fast]

⇧ that's awesome and not a product I think I've ever seen. I don't even remember my dad, who cared more about cars than his fam... (I didn't almost type that, did I), ever mentioning them, but I bet he knew about them as he lived in the Northeast.

 

[BlueTrain]

Tractor rigs still use them when necessary but it's doubtful anyone uses them for a car these days. It's one of those things that aren't really all that interesting, frankly, but there are even more obscure things about cars. Such as:

Removable body panels that cover the rear wheels, called fender skirts.
Little metal feelers that let you know how close you were to the curb when you were parking.
Push-button gear selector on a stalk.
Push-button starter.
Push-button station selector for the radio.
Gear shift lever on the column.
A three-speed transmission.
A two-speed transmission.
A compass on the dash.
A hood scoop.
A hood ornament.
A hood ornament that incorporates a radiator temperature gauge.
A windshield for the rear seat.
A windshield that opens.
A windshield that folds down.
An outside sun visor above the windshield.
A rumble seat.
A luggage rack for the trunk lid.
A spare-tire carrier for the trunk lid.
Or alternately, a spare-tire carrier to the rear of the trunk lid (a Continental kit).
Wire wheels.
Knock-off hubs.
A two-tone paint job as standard.
Chrome; lots and lots of chrome.
And so on and so forth.

All of those things and many more have been available on at least one car in production since WWII. Some were essential for the stylish motorist, others were things to be avoided, like a two-speed transmission. A Gold Star to anyone who can name a car that was available with a two-speed transmission.

 

[MisterCairo]

GM's Powerglide transmission was used on Chevys and some Pontiacs for a number of years.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

My earliest cars had a hand throttle that you pulled out or pushed in to regulate the air-fuel mixture, usually when starting up. It could get complicated, especially in cold weather.

 

[BlueTrain]

I think my father's work truck, which was a Chevrolet panel truck, had a hand throttle but I don't remember him ever using it. All the switches on the dash were push-pull knobs, too, I think, like for the lights. The starter was a pedal on the floor. The truck belonged to the company he worked for but for all I remember, it may not have been a Chevy. Perhaps a Dodge. Pretty sure it wasn't a Ford or Studebaker. He was still using it when he left the company in 1963.

When I mentioned the two-speed transmission, the car I was thinking of was a Chevy Vega, from around 1970. It was an automatic and was not exactly sporty. It looked nice, though.