Need Help Reproducing Vintage Plates

[Yeahrightgreer]

After making a few personal plates for myself and close friends I’ve decided to try and design/reproduce any hard to find license plates that have been lost to history.

(The ones I’ve tested with so far)

Not everyone wants to spend $300 at Carlisle for a rare plate they once saw 16 years ago.

Since I wasn’t alive in the 70s and 80s I don’t quite have 1st hand experience of what all was around so if any of you could please post an imagine or message me of any vintage plates that are rare and that you’d like to see reproduced that’s be awesome. Or even perhaps dealership ads, designs, or brochure imagines you’ve always thought were a good idea for a plate, poster, etc.

If you don’t have an image of one - just try and describe it to the best of your ability and I will scourge old magazines or books and try hunting down an image to use for reference.

Some pictures below for reference:

 

[halifaxhops]

Nice! Only issue I see is the copyright. Mopar is seriously heavy enforcing it.

 

[CBODY67]

YES! It must be remembered that ANYthing the OEMs produce has some type of ownership protection. Reproducing them, witrhout their stated permission, is a violation of federal (in the USA, at least) laws designed to protect such ownership. Which is where licensing comes in!

An entity can apply for a license from the items owner-of-record to produce particular items. in these cases, the OEM approves the licensee to produce the item, according to the ORIGINAL OEM BLUEPRINTS, with the OEM also ensusring that any quality control aspects of the reproduction match what the OEM originally did, with the orientation to have a repro product that is at least as good as what the OEM oroginally produced. There is a licensing fee, I believe, of something like 5% that's paid to the OEM, I believe, but that also gives the repro people the right to also use the OEM's licensed-product logos, too.

In the later 1980s, Chrysler shut down a small magazine, "MoPerformance", as a judge ruled that "MoPerformnce" allegedly appeared to be too much like "Mopar Performance", Chrysler's high perf parts operation. Hated to see that mag go away as it was one of the better MoPar magazines, back then.

Several years laterr, everybody seemed to "know about the deal" and were more cautious about things. Chrysler's legal heavy-handed tactics were somewhat feared, but it also appeared that some other minds at Chrysler realized that they should be working with people enthusiastic about their products rather than otherwise, which was good.

Still, though, the ownership rights to the OEM's original artwork need to be legally respected. Check out the licensing requirements and proceed as desired. I know there can be a market for those products, just keep costs slow and don't over-produce them.

Enjoy!
CBODY67

 

[halifaxhops]

This was pretty ugly.
North Middleton retailer accused of selling counterfeit parts

 

[Yeahrightgreer]

Nice! Only issue I see is the copyright. Mopar is seriously heavy enforcing it.

I was thinking the same thing. I’ll gonna be designing a few as proofs of concepts, to see if I can even produce them, and then looking at licensing.

Most ideas I’d like to focus on are designs from magazine brochures, logos that may have used only once and forgotten, etc.

I wonder how open Fiat/MoPar is to 3rd party licensing

 

[Marv]

Maybe they'll approve as long as you mark your own design as repro? Even if it's on the backside it could be verified original/repro. I can't imagine what benefits a company would have of enforcing their copyright on a a former subsidiary that has been shut down long time ago like Plymouth.

I like your effort!

 

[CBODY67]

Sometimes, OEMs will keep renewing copyrights on past model names and such, so they cn still control them and their use. Once that original control is lost, much harder to get it back, especially if somebody else started to use it in one way or another.

 

[rapidtrans]

The plate in my avatar was made at Carlisle this year. A young man had a booth under the grandstand with a pretty simple set-up. A PC, printer and a small heat press. Any picture of a plate online is public domain and in photoshop he can add any text you want. Prints out a thin mylar type film that he heat presses onto ready cut aluminum plates.
Not a bad little business for a young guy looking to travel and likes cars. He should be in Florida by now for the winter show circuit.

 

[Big_John]

I was thinking the same thing. I’ll gonna be designing a few as proofs of concepts, to see if I can even produce them, and then looking at licensing.

Most ideas I’d like to focus on are designs from magazine brochures, logos that may have used only once and forgotten, etc.

I wonder how open Fiat/MoPar is to 3rd party licensing

Here's what I would do...

I would keep a very low profile and "sell" the plates to friends. Everyone in the car hobby is a friend, right? Keep it all cash and all "under the table". In other words, stay under the radar and if they write you a letter, just stop doing it. Say "I'm sorry, I was just doing this for a few friends" and then remember that you are now in their sights.

I've always been a "better to ask forgiveness rather than permission" guy, so that's how I roll. YMMV and I don't play a lawyer on TV.

I have been involved with trademark infringement and all we really got was a court order for them to stop using our good company name and a small check for some BS fee (that we hung onto to screw with their accounting LOL) and they were using our name to steal our work! Some guy making license plates for friends might get his dick slapped and told to stop it, but doubtful if they are going to pursue it much farther as corporate lawyers are $$$ and all they really want to do is make you stop.

The Moperformance deal was kind of brought on by Bob Oskiera (editor and owner of the mag) himself when he decided the he knew more than Chrysler. I had friends "in the know" on both sides of that argument and he just got Chrysler and their high priced lawyers riled up enough that they made an example out of him. Most of the stuff these days (including even the name of this forum) is looked at as good will for the company and pretty much ignored.

Again, stay under the radar and just stop if somebody says something. Keep a record of how many you sell though...

 

[Yeahrightgreer]

Any picture of a plate online is public domain and in photoshop he can add any text you want.

Well there’s certainly a lot of things online on the internet accessible to the public but they all aren’t in the public domain

The plate in my avatar was made at Carlisle this year. A young man had a booth under the grandstand with a pretty simple set-up. A PC, printer and a small heat press.

I’ve known a few individuals who do this and here’s my problem with it.

Most people simply go online and find a image of the design. at best it’s usually only 1080x1920 in resolution. Sometimes a lot lower.

This is a “Raster” image; basically images made up of thousands of pixels and usually what we think of on the Internet. We all know that when you zoom into or try and blow up a Raster image, at some point the pixels become visible.

Especially onto a aluminum plate, unless it is extremely high resolution or perhaps have the original source file (which I’m confident even Mama Mopar doesn’t) it comes out pixilated. Not much, but enough that you notice it’s not crisp and clean quality .

What I aiming to do is take a standard raster image and using graphic design, convert it into a “Vector” image.

A vector image is a image which essentially uses hundreds or thousands of lines as angles instead of pixels. That way you can blow it to however big, even hundreds of feet big and it will not pixelated.

I think it unlocks a lot of opportunities to do much more than just license plates and do things like posters, wall art, etc

 

[rapidtrans]

I don't know what he did with the image but it's as clear as your vector image above. My avatar pic was probably taken with my iPad camera.
What I would do is see about stamping at least that raised rim or border that is common to all plates. The flat-plate blank is obvious up close.