VehiclesDB

California license plate: Legacy 1960s

Issued today Documented since 2015. Specialty plates for car, van, truck, motorcycle, and trailer, issued by California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). One of 14 California license plates.

The one current California plate whose colors are written directly into the Vehicle Code, a reissue of the 1965 to 1968 black-and- yellow design, sold once 7,500 paid applications arrived.

California (United States) license plate, Legacy 1960s (documented since 2015), sample RVL481
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Format, years and the law

Format
LLLLLL, for example RVL481 (L is any letter)

The format above is broad: a registration that fits it has the right shape, which does not show that this series issued it.

Years issued
Documented since 2015; the format is likely older than the first year documented. Still issued.
Vehicle class
Specialty: optional-design programs on standard serials (US state programs). Issued for car, van, truck, motorcycle, and trailer.
Colours
Characters #FFC72C Background #000000
Size
12 × 6 in (305 × 152 mm) · every country's size
About this plate
Everywhere else in the US pass the statutes specify a PROPERTY (Florida: "a distinguishing color") and leave the VALUE to the department; VC § 5004.3 names the values. It also does something no other instrument found in this programme does: it uses the state's own past designs as the specification, and in doing so publishes a set of historical base periods (1956-1962, 1965-1968, 1969-1986) as law.

Legal basis and sources

  1. § 5004.3: the three legacy designs with their colours and their reference periods (1956-1962, 1965-1968, 1969-1986), the 7,500 paid-application threshold, the 1 January 2015 deadline and the refund rule https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=VEH&sectionNum=5004.3
  2. VIRPM 21.025: six-character sequential, two-to-seven-character personalized, the eligible vehicle types, the plate-with-owner rule https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/handbook/vehicle-industry-registration-procedures-manual-2/special-plates/california-ca...
  3. en.wikipedia.org https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_California

This plate in your app

The series id is us-ca-legacy-1960s. The API returns its format, validation, colours and designs with the rest of California's series:

curl -s https://vehiclesdb.com/api/v1/plates/us-ca \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $VEHICLESDB_API_KEY" \
  | jq '.series[] | select(.id == "us-ca-legacy-1960s")'
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