Texas DPS response to front license plate law.

So your first post is to revive an 18 month old thread?

 

Never had front plate in California. Don't plan on it here either. Got a lot of tickets over the years but never once was lack of front plate even mentioned.

Radar works just fine with no plate. I have no idea how that wives tale got started. A motorcycle has 1/8th the radar signature of a car and no front plate and radar gets those easily enough.

 

The best part of running antique plates in Texas is no more emission testing and you get to run whatever kind of plate you want to on the front of your vehicle, like so:

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Understood and welcome to Austin.

Lived in Austin 20 years with no issues...until recently. Never seen as many people get popped as I have in the past 6 months from little suburb PD's (Lakeway, Cedar Park, Round Rock and even Austin).

I got pulled over twice (ONLY BECAUSE OF NO FRONT PLATE) in Huracan and had to fight it (APD and Lakeway).

Three friends with exotics have been pulled over some specifically for or in addition to plate. All got tickets.

I hear everyone and have zero intention on putting one on this 458 (pay the fine I get it)...but the cops seem to have become bigger jerks in this area as of late.

My .02. Drive safe.

 

Thanks.

My shop is in Lakeway and I drive through Bee Cave past the radar cop every day. Neither seem to care.
Lambo 002, neither Ferrari or my truck. In fact I drove my truck for a whole year with Ca plate. In my experience license plate ticket has always been a jerk your chain ticket.

 

That car doesn't need emission testing no matter the type of plate.

 

Wanna bet?
Up until it was 25 years old trying to get it to pass emissions was a real battle that forced me to take some "creative" measures.

 

It is a little older than 25 years.

 

NOW it is but you should have seen how much fun it was to get it to pass inspection not too long ago.

 

Injected correct?

That really surprises me. We sold a lot of those at my old dealer and they ran quite clean. I never had an issue passing California smog with one.

 

Interesting. Sorry to doubt you but from what I know I find that very hard to believe. The factory setting is supposed to be between 1.5 and 2% which would fail in all 50 states. As far as I know there are less than a handful of 400's in the US with California BAR stickers on them. That emission failure is the reason they were never sold direct through US Ferrari dealers; only through grey market.

 

Suspicious I think.

 

Ditto. I basically had to get it detuned to barely running, pass the test, then retune it. So glad it's out of age now.

 

Quite sadly this is very much not true.

I've never once been bothered about no front plate on any car in texas. In fact I haven't had any plates front or back on my f type in the past year and yet to get a single ticket....for plates anyway. I've actually been quite surprised, aside from one small unit of losers assigned to work some absurd federal grant to extort citizens, dallas cops seem very chill and not interested in traffic BS.

 

'tater??

 

California has more strict standards and my 328 could pass tail pipe test with no cat.

If the cars are running correctly they are very clean.

 

And what part do you doubt? Ferrari chose not to bring them in but the fact remains many were and were made to pass emissions. 2 dealers nation wide were responsible for most according to Ferrari themselves. Houston and my old dealer. We also sold more BBi's than any Ferrari dealer World Wide. At the end of BB production Ferrari gave us an award stating so.

The BAR sticker program started after many of those cars were imported, federalized and registered and many either went out of state or were registered out of state to avoid Californias ridiculous licensing fees prior to the sticker program and not allowed to return in very much the same way my assault rifles will never be allowed to return to California. Current lack of a sticker in no way shows it was never legal or never registered in California. To smog them initially we had to go to a state referee station with a pile of papers, EPA, US Customs and BAR releases to prove the car was legal, even for a retest on a California registered car every single time we needed a smog test. After years of that the state devised the BAR label and froze the number of cars to those registered in the state at that time. It was a huge improvement in the system but cut out a lot of cars that had previously been registered there.

 

Ok Brian not interested in arguing with you since you seem so set on it. Spend a bit of time reading the smog test whoas of owners in the 400 section.

 

I believe you that people have had trouble, does not make it the cars fault.

 

Uh, ok not sure what you're trying to say but ok, you 'da man. Have a good one.

 

It actually IS true, on cars that have sloping rearward radiators......

If the radiator behaind the plate is vertical, they can read the car.

I have had DPS u turn on the highway to chase down my (totally, mostly, plastic) TransAm and tell me to mount one..

FWIW

 

I'm surprised to hear that, or maybe I just got lucky 2 years in a row before my '87 328 turned 25. No changes needed in order to pass the emissions test. I was told by Michael Luongo when I bought it that it was in "stock" condition; he had been taking care of it for the previous 8 years so I'm sure he was right.

Last spring it went on to a new owner in Switzerland who paid a pretty penny to meet their emission standards, among other things. Wonder how often they check emissions, license plates, etc.?