Long ago, I found out that you could put the original classic plates from the year a vehicle was manufactured after it turned 25 years old. I waited for the stealth to turn 25 and then I ended up having to sell it due to having to move suddenly amongst other things.
Once I bought it back, I knew that I had to find the perfect plates for it. In September of 2023, I researched the plates and ended up buying the wrong ones but noticed quickly and talked to the seller who happened to have the right set and sold them to me, thank you coinfish, so by September 21, 2023, I had the classic plates that I had always wanted but I was going to wait until my registration expired to change them out. I renewed one more time while forgetting the plates at home, so I had antique plates for 2 years. When the registration came due this year the car had been broken down for months, so I let it lapse. With antique plates, if they lapse over 2 months, you have to get new plates so when I was expecting to get the car repaired, I went in and attempted to fill out a VTR-850 form at the tax assessor’s office but when I started to tell her what I needed, she immediately started telling me how they “didn’t do that anymore” without even letting me finish. She told me that my plates would not work because they were truck plates before asking my name or anything about my vehicle. When I explained again what I needed and pulled up the form online and told her the form number, she said, “Oh that’s different,” and proceeded to start the process. I don’t know what it was different from, what she was imagining in her head?
She got a book out and found the plates I had and confirmed that they were 1992 plates and said that she had to get them approved by someone and then took them in the back. She came back telling me that they would not work because of the 1994 registration sticker that is on the plate. I pointed out in the form that it says that she will be giving me a new sticker to cover it so it shouldn’t matter and that it just means the plate was used for 3 years but she wasn’t having it.
She took the plates back to the person behind the door again and came back with an ‘unfortunately, no’ type answer, once again stating that the registration sticker has to say 92 on it.
Here are the plate requirements for from a current VTR-850 form.
The plates that I had originally ordered and the plates that I ordered after I realized my mistake with the Texas flag on the wrong side. They are in good condition, and I was going to try to get the stickers off, but I am afraid of doing damage to the plates if I were to use heat or chemicals on them. One thing that makes it particularly hard to find these plates is that I need the front and back from the right year in near perfect condition.
My next idea was to try a neighboring county to see if they would do a cross-country registration but I have tried one and they said no and the other will take me a while to drive to on my lunch break so I would have to wait for my next day off in a few weeks to do that.
When I consulted a classic car group on reddit, users confirmed that they had never heard of this new made-up rule that doesn’t make much sense but they did suggest buying the registration sticker off of ebay and trying again, so that will be my next attempt.
The best that I could find was a sheet of 50 stickers which cost slightly more than the plates themselves but at this point I am determined to use these license plates.
So please wish me luck, I will be going into battle late next week to try to do this again.
