DeTomaso Mailing List: February 00, Message #32

Several people asked about pricing for French plates, so I thought I would post this to the whole list. 

Italian license plates, like American ones, are manufactured by the State and are not available for novelty purposes. Therefore, the only real means of procuring Italian plates is to steal one off a car while the owner is not around... 

In France, however, you can buy plates at your local hardware store. You tell the guy what your plate number is, he whips up a plate in his shop and a few minutes later - voila! A set of plates! 

The limit in France is 9 characters. Normally the last two are numbers, which indicate which "department" the car is registered in. But for novelty purposes, I suppose you could use all 9 places for letters, numbers, whatever. 

When I talked to someone yesterday, they gave me a price of 130FF (about $21, based on today's exchange rate) for two plates. They said to give them the desired combination and they can give me an exact rate. A typical French plate has a yellow background on the back with black letters, and a white plate on the front with black letters. If you preferred, I could probably get both the same color, or whatever. Size is the European standard, that is long and relatively narrow... Much more rectangular than American plates... They do also have squarish rear plates if need be to fit on American cars, but they look a lot less European...

Anyway, you now know about what they cost, e-mail me if anyone is serious about wanting any. 

Charlie McCall 
1972 DeTomaso Pantera Pre-L #3847
"Raising Pantera Awareness across Europe"