Indiana Quarter

Indiana has a "Vanity Plate" program that allows for a number of special-interest plates (such as your favorite university) as well as for custom-numbered plates. My chosen and annually-reserved official Indiana license plate is "37 CORD." For a year or two the state issued only a renewal sticker for the vanity plates, but there was such a howl that they resumed issuing a whole new plate each year.

The flat aluminum plate does seem just a bit cheesy, considering the registration fee for the plate, excise taxes, county "wheel taxes," the vanity plate fee, and whatever else they can tack on to it.

Due to a set of rather bizarre circumstances, my "37 CORD" plate was actually issued one year to my 1940 LaSalle, but that is a different--and long--story.

--Tom

We're only required to have the rear plate, even if using Year of Manufacture. I'm running both on mine.
To check "original" paint, they have a color chart they look at... so, as long as it's close (the gals at the BMV are not the most knowledgeable regarding the old plates).
BMV registers the number and provides you with an affidavit allowing you to run the YoM plate, but, you still need to carry the Antique plate, affidavit, registration, etc. with you. I asked about the pairs... they said that the first person to register that number gets it.
Unfortunately, Indiana plates need to be renewed yearly, but, they only issue new plates every 5 years or so.

balinwire wrote: I forgot to mention that I think Indiana only requires one plate so it will be much easier to find your year antique plate. They require us to run a front plate and it is difficult to find a pair.

When you say US I presume you mean here in Texas since I know of only one Po-Pa's Fix-It shop down near Houston. There is a way to get away with a single plate in Texas, and that is to use a DEALER PLATE.

I have a near-perfect 1937 Texas Dealer Plate if anyone needs it for their automobile. Very reasonable at $400 which is about what I paid for it at the Pate Swap Meet in Fort Worth last year. It is the maroon colored plate shown below:

Ohio still requires 2 plates, even for year of manufacture plates. The regular plates are still embossed but any special plates are now the flat ones which took some getting used to.

I forgot to mention that I think Indiana only requires one plate so it will be much easier to find your year antique plate. They require us to run a front plate and it is difficult to find a pair.
If you read the details on the Indiana site they mention it shall be of original paint. How closely is that observed? An original repaint should be OK. We get five year registration on our antique registrations.
I wonder if you will have to renew antiques yearly.
We are also exempt from yearly safety inspection's, I guess they feel if we are going to drive a seventy year old car it is better than new, and we would be much more careful also.

The story sounded believable, they fooled me. Everything else is made of plastic today. I would not doubt they will delete letters and numerals for UPC bar codes on plastic plates soon.
We have the flat plates also. The street signs are no longer embossed either.
The Historical license plate site is wonderful, every Indiana plate in color, great resource.
link below,
www.in.gov/bmv/4174.htm

Indiana does not use that plate anymore, and they never were made from plastic. The pictured plates were the first ones made from flat aluminum.
This year, Indiana has 2 std. plates. 1 is blue with white letters, the other is red/white/blue, and says "In God We Trust".

Both are flat aluminum. No longer do we have the embossed plates.

Also new in 2008, you can run a "Year of Manufacture" license plate on your Antique automobile... too bad the fees associated to do that are higher than running a standard plate (cost $48 extra, on top of the std. $35 fee).

Is this an April fools joke?

INDIANA LICENSE PLATES MISTAKEN FOR FAKES
by Ben Radstein, staff reporter
Indiana motorists have been stopped by police scores of times when traveling in other states. Are people from Indiana speeding, weaving in traffic and committing other moving violations more often than drivers from other states? Does the rest of the country have it in for Hoosiers? No. Indiana's newest license plates are made of plastic, and all other states are still using metal. Hoosiers are routinely accused of trying to pass off novelty plates as the genuine article.
"I took a trip to Alabama to play golf on the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail," said John Pike, "and was stopped no less than three times. I thought Deputy Buford who stopped me just outside of Birmingham was going to beat me or something." Pike explained that Buford's first words were, "You ain't foolin' no one with that toy license plate, boy!" He was certain that there was no state issuing plastic ones, and he thought the bar code at the bottom especially made it look "store-bought". Pike was eventually able to convince the sheriff's deputy to check the plate number, instead of hauling him to the county courthouse, and impounding his 2003 Honda Odyssey. He was then free to go. Indiana residents traveling in Iowa, Michigan, Kansas, Pennsylvania and many other places tell similar stories.
Hank Kuhn of South Bend was visiting relatives in Philadelphia when a Pennsylvania state trooper stopped him. "I was sure that he was joking, you know, just having a little fun with the tourists, when he said I had a fake license plate, so I joked back. I asked him if Pennsylvania is still called The Keystone State, he said yes. I then said, and you are a Pennsylvania State Policeman, right? he said yes. Then I said, so I guess that makes you a keystone cop? It turned out he hadn't been joking, and didn't find that funny at all. He arrested me, and took me to his precinct, only to be informed that my plate was genuine. They let me go with only a warning that my keystone cop joke was not funny."
This is not the first controversy over Indiana's new plate design. They had a contest to design the state's new plate, and the winning entry had the words, "Back Home Again", the opening line from the state song, instead of the web address. Hoosiers were angry when a bureaucrat changed it without even asking the people who voted to choose the new design. Across the state, the plate is reviled. Many are purchasing stickers to put the motto back where they feel it belongs, but nothing they do can turn the fake-looking plastic into genuine-looking metal

Highly doubt that Governor O'Bannon will recall it... he passed away Sept. 13, 2003....

I found a new Indiana quarter in my pocket change today and was mystified why they choose this design when the state was the home to the most beautiful car in the world, the 810 Cord and home to the ACD world headquarters. This is there reasoning,

"The Indiana quarter, the fourth quarter of 2002 and nineteenth in the series, represents the state pride in the famous Indianapolis 500 race. The design features the image of a racecar superimposed on an outline of the state with the inscription "Crossroads of America." The design also includes 19 stars signifying Indiana as the 19th state admitted into the Union.

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway is a 2.5 mile track built in 1909 for automotive research purposes. While the track was and is used for research, it is best known for hosting auto races, most famously, the Indy 500. The oldest auto race in the world, the Indy 500 has been run every year since 1911, except during the two World Wars. The winner of the first Indy 500 was Ray Harroun whose car, the Marmon Wasp, is thought to have been the first to have a single seat and to use a rearview mirror. In the time since Harroun's victory, the Indy 500 has become an international event, synonymous with auto racing.

The First Lady of Indiana, Judy O'Bannon, requested design concept submissions for the Indiana quarter at the Indiana State Fair on August 17, 1999. From the 3,736 submissions it received, the Indiana Quarter Design Committee narrowed the field to 17 semi-finalists and asked Indiana residents to vote for their favorites. The Committee received nearly 160,000 votes and submitted four candidate concepts to the U.S. Mint, including sports icons, state symbols and Chief Little Turtle, generally considered the last chief of the Miami Indians.

The Mint sent Governor O'Bannon four candidate designs on June 26, 2001. Through a July 18, 2001, letter, Governor O'Bannon indicated his selection of the "Crossroads of America."

-- Content courtesy of the United States Mint

I never understood beauracracy, maybe Governor O'Bannon will realize the extreme error and recall this design and put the image of a real car on the coin.