Dealership car registration

[dtavres]

Hi all,

So, as this post says (www.DMC10515.com/someone-is-selling-my-car), someone recently listed a DeLorean for sale. At first glance, I thought it was a fake post, as the car in the picture had MY license plate - 2AWA053.

Well, I've only had my car for a few months, and didn't have the plate perfectly memorized... after closer inspection, MY plate is actually 2AWA057 - NOT 053... but it's SO CLOSE!

Does anyone know how DeLoreans were registered in CA in 1983?

I know for sure (from the first owner) that my car was bought and registered in 1983 in the Torrance area. With these two cars having license plates so close together, does that mean a single dealer likely registered several cars at the same time and put the plates on the cars? Or is this just 'an amazing coincidence'?

[DMCVegas]

Yup. They probably just went through the same DMV Office which distributed the same plates. They get them in sequential batches from the state. Hell, back in 1997 when I registered my first car, there was a woman standing at the DMV window registering her new car right before me. I got the very next plate after her which was of course only one digit off. And my mother called to tell me that last week she spotted that woman still sporting that same license plate on the road (license plates are a big deal in Vegas to show you're not a recent transplant given that plate numbers unlike California and Texas are assigned to the driver, and NOT the vehicle).

Sometimes dealerships may also offer concierge services for Vehicle Registration (it's standard in places like Texas, but not California). Which given the sales price of a new DMC-12 wouldn't be unheard of. So it is very possible that if the original owner of your car bought it in 1982-83 at a dealership in California the same week that ANOTHER buyer on a different day purchased one, the dealership may very well have had the concierge service go to the bulk window at the DMV for a mass registration at the end of the week, and then just registered a bunch of customer vehicles out of the same sequential stack of plates. We've got a '14 Ford Focus we bought new, and there are a handful of other '14 Fords putting around my area of town that have plates that are only a digit or two off because of this, and they too have the dealer stickers from the same place we bought ours.

[Bitsyncmaster]

Here in Maryland, the dealer has a bunch of new plates (tags) that he can register the car he sold you with that new plate.

My Son bought a new car a few months after I did at the same dealer and his plate is only a few digits higher than mine.

[dtavres]

As always, thanks for the great feedback!

I love coincidences, and really enjoyed this one lol