My wife and I bought a car a couple of years ago from a used car dealer. They were professional and I felt good about the price we negotiated with them, but once we had driven off the lot, that was where the relationship ended. It surprised me then, when just last week I was backing my own car out of the driveway, and I noticed that I had never bothered to remove the dealer’s promotional license plate frame. Argh!
Those sort of frames are ubiquitous and easily discarded if you don’t feel any compunction towards giving the dealer free advertising. Other methods are far more onerous and require a lot more work to remove – so much so that it’s usually best to negotiate their not being installed in the first place. I mean of course the dealer badges that a number of shops dutifully attach – sometimes with adhesive or often with rust inviting rivets – to trunklid or backend.
Now, I have little issue with negotiating a price reduction for carrying such advertisement for a pre-agreed length of time. Barring that however, CarMax can just wipe their name off my purchase as part of the pre drive-off checklist. I’m not one to offer something for nothing to any corporation, and I certainly wouldn’t accept a car that has been permanently marred with that sort of dealer branding. Do you feel the same way? What’s your take on having everyone know where you bought your car?
Image: The Samba
Hooniverse Asks: Does Your Car or Track Advertise the Dealer Where You Bought it?
By Robert Emslie
Jun 15, 2015
Jeff Glucker
I haven’t gotten around to scraping the dealer sticker off the Leaf yet, only had it a little over a month. The dealer license plate frame got tossed when I took off the temporary plate. I think I took off the stickers from our Trailblazer. They didn’t bother to put anything on my truck. Guess the dealer wasn’t proud of a base model work truck running around with their name on it, but probably had more to do with the fact I had it transferred in from the dealer up the road and they did a quickie delivery. Back when I had my Z-28, I bought it from an individual, but I do remember peeling off dealer stickers.
100% agree. The first conversation with the finance manager before paperwork is printed is that no insignia stays on the car, and I check before we wrap up. I started walking out once when they put the sticker on the trunk, anyway.
The plate frames stayed on our GTI, though. I’m a sucker for the VW corporate advertising typeface.
My F100 is from the days when rear bumpers were optional dealer-installed items on pickups. Usually you could buy an expensive-ish chrome one or a cheaper painted one advertising the selling dealer. The original owner of the F100 opted for a painted bumper, similar to the one in this picture.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-E1EFI9nJGuE/VXcytxmHibI/AAAAAAAAa6I/wuszJeAnfo0/s1600/IMG_3862.jpg
My ’88 Ram 50 had a monstrous-looking (for a compact pickup) chrome step bumper that my dad elected to have installed instead of a radio. You can imagine how I felt about that choice when the truck because mine at 16. It also didn’t match the black steel front bumper at all.
Ah, Steakley. The Steakleys were into sports car and drag racing. The other day I saw a nicely rodded late ’60s C-10, and the dealer step bumper had a fresh coat of silver paint, but the lettering needed to be repainted (the lettering was usually red). When I was a kid, I saw these bumpers all the time, but sadly, they usually get tossed when trucks are restored or turned into street rods. A link to the past lost.
I’m no fan of dealer badging, but those are worth keeping around.
I removed the “Jay & Gene Chrysler Plymouth Dodge, Columbus, GA” vinyl from my dad’s hand-me-down ’88 Ram 50 during its first detail. Even though the truck wasn’t mine, just mine to drive and maintain with my folks’ permission, that first taste of ownership sparked that little “I ain’t advertising for you — you’re not even in business anymore!” rebellion that has lasted since.
My next vehicle, the ’96 Geo Prizm, was a gleaming plasticized chrome badge that was either riveted on or glued with Satan’s own kragle. There was no removing it. Screw you, Bill Heard.
The ’98 Saturn SL that followed that ‘un had no claimants. It had an interesting history that wound up with it having accumulated 100k in 4 years and a block heater in GA.
The ’96 Volvo 960 (which was the best dirt road car ever with its torquey I6 pushing the rears) bore a faded plasticized chrome Columbus Motor Company badge, which I didn’t mind so much because that was a premium dealership that dealt with expensive imports, and it didn’t have anyone’s name attached to it.
The ’02 Protege also had no claimants.
The ’05 Accord that my beloved brought to our relationship bore Carl Gregory’s ugly smudge. I could not get her permission to remove it (“you’ll scratch the paint underneath/leave adhesive/etc”), but that was taken care of for me when a glancing blow to the driver’s rear while stopped for an accident-induced jam on I-185 required $7k of work to that quarter and a repainted trunk lid.
The ’05 Odyssey that was bought via Accord trade plus cash also bore Carl Gregory’s stain, but I did get permission to remove it because we felt like the place was full of dishonest criminals, and she didn’t care as much about the Odyssey’s silver finish versus that of the burgundy Accord.
The ’92 Cressida that was briefly mine before a headgasket I couldn’t repair at the time (no garage, no friends with wrenches ’cause I’d just moved to a new city) necessitated it’s non-runner status sale bore no claiming marks excepting that it had lived all of its 109k in Metairie, LA, outdoors, and had the paint to show for it (but thankfully hadn’t been driven through the post-Storm flood).
The ’02 WRX, which was the most expensive-to-own car I’ve ever had, had been stripped of every badge excepting the “ESX” ones sewn into it’s custom alcantara seat covers, thus establishing it as a victim of abuse at the hands of a tuner company, which probably explained a lot of what ailed it while I owned it.
The ’80 Rabbit convertible had no claimants unless you count the family of mice evicted from the trunk.
The ’12 CBR250R had a Shawnee Cycle Plaza keychain, which I kept on because the key was tiny by itself and I need such things to help me keep up with keys.
The ’81 Mercedes 300SD only bears the marks of previous owners, such as a Phi-Beta-something sticker in the front window behind the rear view mirror and some pilot’s association sticker in the rear window where the CHMSL should be.
And now all of you know my complete car history.
Dealer license plate frame. Couldn’t care less, and my 13 year old van starts being scratched up enough to look like an anti-advertisement anyway.
Hehe, for the outsiders: that sticker is the annual tax label, expressing that you’ve paid for that year. They used to change colours annually, so the police and worse, your neighbour, could see whether you have paid or not.
They ceased issuing those a couple of years ago…
In Alberta, Canada, (probably other places,too) they gave out different coloured license plates for every year. This stopped in 1974.
This was way before my time, but I am aware of this because I found a box of old ones in storage. Now I have a complete set of 1957-1973 license plates, plus the two other models they’ve offered since then.
Now we just put stickers on the same plate, every year. Maybe we might even follow you guys and remove them too.
Seems pretty wasteful/expensive, but it’s the same principle as with the “period correct plates” found on some classics?
The stickers used to accumulate over time. Ten on top of each other were not rare. Didn’t bother to scrape off the last one.
Yes, similar to California blue/black plates, but I believe those were used for a range of years, whereas these were yearly.
Wasteful, yes. Farmers used old ones to patch buildings. Me? I use them for garage art.
Nice collection! I’ve got a big ol’ box of various US state plates kicking around my parents’ garage. I hope it’s still there. They never really get rid of anything (except when I visit), so it’s likely just a matter of excavating them.
That’s basically the same story here.
My garage, which was built in the early 20th century, was used as a storage shed for the past five decades. Parents said I could keep my car in there if I cleaned it out. Which how I found a box of old license plates.
Basically I threw out the boring junk and nailed the cool junk to the walls.
Preteen me scrounged my collection together honestly, none of this stumbling across someone else’s hoard! Fortunately, I had relatives & family friends scattered around the country who were willing to give me old plates. Found a couple of old Vermont plates buried in the back yard while helping an aunt dig a garden one time. Those were the coolest. Surprisingly unrusted, which I attribute to both heft of the metal & thickness of the paint.
Sask did the same thing: First new plate annually, then new sticker annually. But eventually we went so far as to get rid of the sticker too. If my registration didn’t come up in November I might miss it, but I’d much rather not replace stickers in -30C.
Several years ago Washington eliminated the month and year stickers for the front plate but still requires the front plate itself and stickers for the rear plate. At the time everyone was told they could just leave the expired stickers on the front plate, which struck me as potentially an awkward point when driving out of state. Now that WA also insists on replacing most plates themselves every few years, the expired front stickers are pretty much gone.
7 year replacement cycle for WA plates, I believe. I figure that’s a good time to replace the daily beater.
What’s the fee to replace a plate? Quite the motivation to change cars, though. I can imagine some of the “look what my neighbour does”-crowd not to be willing to get a differently coloured livense plate.
It’s really not that much. However, my DD ’87 244 is approaching that point where I feel like I need to start looking for a slightly less elderly daily driver. Friends of mine are moving away soon, and I’ve got right of first refusal on their well-maintained, early 2000-something Outback wagon. I’ve got another year before I have to replace the plates, but I’ll have to renew the registration soon; there’s no refund for registration fees (as far as I’m aware of in Washington state) even if you sell the car the day after renewal. Since I’m a cheap bastard, I’d prefer not to register a car I might sell immediately.
WA plates haven’t changed for a while, so you can’t necessarily tell if they’re brand new. One of the justifications for making us pay for new plates every X years is that they become less reflective with age & thus harder for police to identify in transit. Feels like more of a revenue generation exercise.
Wouldn’t a freshly renewed registration be a great selling point – or would that be personal for you only? I guess going from an 80s Volvo to an 00s Subaru is a very reasonable and pretty common step. I did much the same thing, and know of others, too. When the current generation of highly reliable Volvo approaches beater status, one might be tempted to go back.
State of Washington doesn’t extend the courtesy of transferring existing registration to a new owner, regardless of when it was last registered. Of course, buying a vehicle with expired registration doesn’t invoke any back fees or penalties here, unlike California’s system.
Of all the cars that I’ve owned, I have only purchased 2 from dealers. On only one of them did the dealership affixed a sticker to the deck lid. I didn’t think much of it. I think I took it off at some point, but didn’t make a point to take it off. The odd thing was the unspoken bond I felt with other cars that I saw with that dealership’s sticker on the back. I don’t know how weird that makes me.
My Vibe doesn’t, nor did my tC (even though i bought it from myself when I worked there, long story) Although that hasn’t stopped the dealers from trying to put on the “Serviced At” license plate frames.
My Van had the dealer vinyl on before I bought it as it was used. The dealer was Fullerton, so that became Futon, which I thought was funny enough to keep.
no. No. NO. NO! Does NO work for you?
Seriously, if I’m going to advertise for you on my vehicle, you’re going to subsidize my monthly payment. I figure it’s worth about $50/mo. I think that’s reasonable.
Fortunately, it’s rare to see this tactic on the west coast. No decals, no rivets. If anything, just a 10 cent frame that gets tossed into the recycle bin.
I remember back in the day whenever a factory rep visited a dealership, they’d pull off the badge or license plate frame that was on your car and put on their own. We all had similar cars so you really had to know your license plate number or you could walk up to the wrong car. Good times.
I haven’t gotten around to taking the dealer plate frames off the 2 yet (only new car I’ve ever got from a dealer), but I’m just thankful they don’t use badging that requires drilling holes – heads would roll for that.
That said, that’s not a huge thing around here, mostly just stickers when it is done. I don’t like it new, but I find vintage dealer badging sort of fascinating.
Yes, there are little die-cut letters spelling out their web address at the top center of the rear glass. I’ll take it off eventually, but it’s tasteful enough that I am not incredibly motivated to get it off there.
If I think I got a good deal, I don’t mind carrying a dealer logo or frame. I do notice with CarMax cars that it doesn’t take long before the letters and the dashes start falling off. I do like seeing cars from the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s with emblems advertising long-gone dealers. The neatest old emblems were the ones that were used by some dealers on ’40s and ’50s Buicks, across the top or bottom of the trunk bar/handle.
http://www.atdetroit.net/forum/messages/6790/78122.jpg
I did see a CarMax car where the x had been removed, thus giving the car good CarMa.
I’ve had to remove the dealer frame more than once from our Volkswagen. Once, when we bought the car and then again, once or twice when they snuck a new one on there while it was in for warranty work. They’re determined, I’ll give them that.
Fortunately my car only had a dealer license plate frame instead of a sticker. I kept it on for almost a year only because I didn’t know what else to put on it. I eventually got another one to replace it, so now I’ve got nothing.
My roommate’s 1966 Pontiac Bonneville still has a dealer badge on his though. Taber Pontiac – Atlanta, GA. He bought the car from the original owner several years back and kept it on for originality.
Not only do I keep the dealership plate holder on the truck, I named the truck Steve after the dealer and recommend him to anyone in need of a used but fleet maintained work truck or van.
I remove the dealer badge ASAP if I’ve not been able to prevent it’s application in the first place.
I’m willing to keep a dealership license plate frame installed if some conditions are met: (1) the purchase experience went well, (2) the frame doesn’t flop around, and (3) the frame does not obstruct any text or design feature of the license plate.
All conditions were met for the front plate on my van while in California (I highly recommend Shellworth Chevrolet in Vacaville), but the frame twanged too much on the rear plate. And the frame obstructed too much of my Texas plates, so now it’s gone.
I remove stickers or badges, though.
When I needed a frame I asked the neighboring car dealer, because they were close and willing to give me them for free. Luckily they have a nice name (‘machine agency ‘) and are an old entity, so it’s not cheesy advertising, just their name.
I’ve kept the dealer frame on my 500 Abarth out of a mix of ambivalence and the hope for better warranty interpretation, if needed. After three years, the Abarth has been as reliable as a hammer. I’ll probably remove the frame as we get closer to warranty expiration. Or maybe I’ll trade the Abarth in on an Alfa?
When trading in, make sure to transfer your lucky frame!
I remove all dealer advertising within -hours- after bringing a car home, along with any other stickers or decals. This is part of its initiation ritual into the herd.
There is a special place in Hell for dealers who drill holes in cars to affix advertising.
There was a case where I actually put a dealer ad back ON a car. A chromed pot metal plate frame emblazoned with what is quite possibly the best car dealer name ever: Lyman Slack. I foolishly left it on my old Wildcat when i let it go.
On a similar subject: what’s up with displaying commercial product logos all over back windows? For example, the giant hand grenade decal, which I found to my disappointment isn’t a symbol of youthful rebellion or hooliganism, but just another company logo. Half of them aren’t even car-related: decals for sugary soft drinks, fashion designers or makers of body spray. You’re expressing some vague notion of individuality by emphasizing what products you use? Pathetic. I’d be embarrassed. Damn kids, back in my day, get off my lawn, etc.
There’s an exemption for race cars, right? I do have a sticker in the rear window of the race car.
http://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8449/7992582304_70ee747e62.jpg
“Winning like never before” – that’s a commitment, doctor.
My only hope is that the statement is just as ambiguous in Swedish.
Race cars and Hooniverse decals are always exempted.
Bronco: Not since I got the real plates in the mail. Until that she was a great Villa Ford billboard.
Maxima: Carmax branding lasted all of 3 (?) days.
Highlander: Well it sorta, kinda does. It’s got a couple of “Toyota moving forward” LP frames. Given it was purchased directly from toyota (PO was a Toyota North America employee) you can say it carries the “dealer branding”.
The few times that we’ve bought cars from dealers, I’ve insisted that they remove the stickers.
That said, I have the Alfa Romeo of Palo Alto frame that my Spider was delivered with in 1984 hanging in the garage. If that car ever gets a cosmetic restoration, it may go back on.
Even my kids know that stickers on a car are a bad idea… If a dealer can’t figure that out, it’s not a dealer for me. The cheesy dealer plate frame is annoying as well, but I don’t complain (ok, I’m complaining) since 2 minutes with a screwdriver solves the problem.
Still…be nice to not have to worry about that on something you’re spending that much money on!
Nope- Just like everyone else, I pulled the decal and the plate off as soon as it got home. Purchase experience was good… not stellar. And since last Labor Day, the dealer was sold and has a new name.
None of the sketchy private parties from whom I prefer to purchase vehicles has yet bothered to affix their own customized badge or license plate frame as part of the transaction. Should anyone ever go to that much trouble, I’d be inclined to keep it out of sheer admiration.
When I worked in Parking Enforcement, I always thought that seeing the different dealer stickers was fairly fascinating, especially since I worked on a university campus with a wide range of localities represented. (The best one I ever saw was Matt Slap Subaru in Newark, DE)
As far as my own car, I’ve actually contemplated getting one from another state just for fun. When I bought the car from the original owner, it didn’t have anything on it. The stickers for the original dealer that sold the car are really ugly, so I may have pulled it off if there had been one.
I kept the dealer licence plate bracket on the truck, because of it’s name. It’s always good for a few laughs. I clearly recall my neighbor stating “only you would buy a truck from…”
http://s3-media2.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/EYj8nT5qqsrmwRd6oki-ig/ls.jpg
On the Bonneville, which I bought used, it came with a license plate bracket of the selling dealership, When I got it serviced at a different dealership, they changed the license plate bracket to one with their name. I couldn’t care less, and probably wouldn’t have noticed, until I found the old bracket in the trunk a week or so later.
I’ve seen that happen on other people’s cars. It would take some determination to do that to mine–I use these screws:
http://cdn.instructables.com/FJ4/GUA4/G7DYYIJB/FJ4GUA4G7DYYIJB.LARGE.jpg
it would be fun to watch em try… and then realize they had been defeated!
My ’88 RX-7 has a neat “Classic Oldsmobile Mazda” badge affixed to the left taillight housing. I despise stickers and badges for the most part, but I do collect cool plate frames.
Because I had compunctions over providing the dealer with free advertising, I removed the plate frames.
When I picked up my last new/dealer-purchased car, I did the initial walk-around of the car I ordered in and saw the dealer badging stuck to the trunk. I told them that it needed to disappear off the car before I was back from F&I hell… a couple hours later. The badging disappeared and I took delivery of the car. The car was great, the dealership… meh.
When I bought the SHO used, privately, it had stickers from some Toyota dealership on the back. I didn’t buy the car from that dealer, the wasn’t cool, it was for the wrong make, and I’ve actually never heard of the dealer, so yeah, it came off pretty fast, along with the K & N sticker on the window. If I didn’t choose to support them in the first place, why would I advertise for them?
I mostly don’t care, but the dealer stickers on mine are subtle – black on red. There’s a plate frame too that I also don’t really care about. The dealership where I bought it does like to put their website on the back window, but they didn’t have a chance to do that before I bought it. THAT I would have removed.
One nice thing is if you’ve got a car originally sold at an out-of-town dealer the distinct dealer sticker can be helpful for finding your car in a crowded lot. Less useful for hometown products.
On most of the cars that I’ve owned, any frames, badges, stickers, etc. that advertise a dealer have been removed. This is partly due to not feeling particularly compelled to give the dealer free use of my vehicle as a mobile billboard for their franchise, but also because these things inevitably have the city that the dealer is located in on them, and I don’t like driving around somewhere out-of-area and openly advertising the fact that I might not be from around there.
Exceptions to this: interesting frames and/or badges that I’ve found in the junkyard on scrapped vehicles and have recovered. Over the years I’ve managed to acquire ones from now-gone Alfa, Peugeot, Fiat, MG, etc. dealers – but the prize piece was one set of frames that actually managed to cram in the fact that the dealer in question sold Jeep, Eagle, Chrysler, Dodge, Plymouth, *and* Renault vehicles; somewhat unsurprisingly, it came off of a Renault (not Eagle) Premier. Doing the maths on this, there was probably only about a nine-month timespan in automotive history where that could have been their complete lineup.
On the ’96 Thunderbird and the ’05 Dakota I took the dealer-applied decals off with a pressure washer. I waited too long on the T-bird… I can still see where the decal was, given just the right light, though it hasn’t been there since about the era where the Columbia re-entry incident was still headline news.
The 2010 Challenger inexplicably had only a license plate frame, though it lingered in dealer inventory for about 6 months before I bought it. That lasted till I got the plates.
The 2015 Challenger had a dealer decal and a license plate frame. The decal was on the bumper cover and lasted about 48 hours before it mysteriously disappeared; the plate frame survived till I got the new registration decals for the plates that came off the 2010.