Photos from the "old days"

[DLD]

No plate numbers. Was it usual?

I think this is a museum piece (or the number is Photoshop'ped out).

A typical Soviet private car number was 2 numbers + 2 numbers + three letters. Ours was 5306 МИЕ. (1972 registration). The transport agency slighty changed the system again in 1980.

There were separate series for the foreign diplomat cars - three letters + three numbers. The military vehicles had their own (lots of trucks) and the top Soviet politicians their own, normally MOC or МОЛ + three numbers. The latter autos were serviced at a KGB garage and the running joke - you had to speak Russian - was that МОЛ stood for "Мы Охраняем Лёню" ("We're protecting Leonid", with Leonid being Brezhnev, the General Secretary of the CPSU and the titular head of the USSR)

A Soviet hockey great Valery Kharlamov got a special permit to have his #17 on his license plate Another hockey star Aleksandr Maltsev got his #10.

The license plates themselves, lo and behold, were made by the inmates in the Soviet jails.

[DLD]

Here's an article in English on Brezhnev's car collection. He was no Jay Leno.

https://gtshina.ru/en/tyuning/avtomo...obilei-byla-u/

[Run&Gun]

Even until this day, 20 or so states in the USA don't require plate numbers in the front of cars (only the back)...I imagine 30-40-50 years ago, it was the same in many other places.

No front plates here in NC...

[Run&Gun]

I think this is a museum piece (or the number is Photoshop'ped out).

A typical Soviet private car number was 2 numbers + 2 numbers + three letters. Ours was 5306 МИЕ. (1972 registration). The transport agency slighty changed the system again in 1980.

There were separate series for the foreign diplomat cars - three letters + three numbers. The military vehicles had their own (lots of trucks) and the top Soviet politicians their own, normally MOC or МОЛ + three numbers. The latter autos were serviced at a KGB garage and the running joke - you had to speak Russian - was that МОЛ stood for "Мы Охраняем Лёню" ("We're protecting Leonid", with Leonid being Brezhnev, the General Secretary of the CPSU and the titular head of the USSR)

A Soviet hockey great Valery Kharlamov got a special permit to have his #17 on his license plate Another hockey star Aleksandr Maltsev got his #10.

The license plates themselves, lo and behold, were made by the inmates in the Soviet jails.

There are still prisons here in the US that make license plates today.

[DLD]

An amusing story (of sorts) about the Soviet car plates.

In 1973, my parents decided to drive about 400 miles to Odessa (nowadays in an independent state of Ukraine) for my cousin's wedding, while spending the before and the after weeks along the Black Sea coast. My cuz met his wife while on vacation and that was the away half. As pioneers of Soviet auto-tourism, we spent first 10 days or so sleeping in our own tent. Once that was over, we decided to check out the touristy portions of Odessa. In the city, my dad parked our car in a "no parking" zone, while making a phone call. When we returned to the car, an officer of the law was writing us a parking citation.

My dad : It was just a few minutes, officer.

The officer : Oh, ya, sure. A few minutes. We know how your Moldavians operate.

Dad : Moldavians? Who's a Moldavian?

The officer : You. Aren't you a Moldavian?

Dad : Nah. МИЕ is from Minsk. I have the driver's license to prove it.

The officers then rips the paper citation into the tiniest pieces and walks off.

We get into out car and drive off while we can.

Really didn't see that much of Odessa.

[Publimix]

The father of my father in law (84) made these pictures. Glass plate negative. WW1

motor.jpg
sold.jpg

[Joshua_G]

Even until this day, 20 or so states in the USA don't require plate numbers in the front of cars (only the back)...I imagine 30-40-50 years ago, it was the same in many other places.

In my country (Israel), and I guess all over Europe, front and back numbered license plates are mandatory.
When I stayed in California for few months some 25 years ago and purchased a second-hand car, I was amazed that attaching the purchase bill to the front window was enough. No numbered license plates were required for a while. A policeman stopped me in the small town where I stayed; he didn't mind the license plates, he only told me to take down (later) the semi-transparent grey plastic film cover from the windows, which made them semi-dark.

[Joshua_G]

The father of my father in law (84) made these pictures. Glass plate negative. WW1

Here is the answer to some pixel-peepers; there is a quality to such pictures, a quality which I cannot verbalize, that surpasses very many photos taken on later years, up to today.
(The same goes to vinyl records, which I enjoy listening to, even these days)…

[Run&Gun]

In my country (Israel), and I guess all over Europe, front and back numbered license plates are mandatory.
When I stayed in California for few months some 25 years ago and purchased a second-hand car, I was amazed that attaching the purchase bill to the front window was enough. No numbered license plates were required for a while. A policeman stopped me in the small town where I stayed; he didn't mind the license plates, he only told me to take down (later) the semi-transparent grey plastic film cover from the windows, which made them semi-dark.

Some states have almost rash attitudes towards window tint with nonsensical laws/rules and, at times, enforcement, that some would consider border on overzealous.

The story that I’ve always been told here goes something like in the late 80’s/early 90’s the police pulled a vehicle over and were shot by the occupants, because the vehicle had “blacked-out” tinted windows which prevented the officers from seeing inside the vehicle. So, the maximum legally allowed “darkness” of windows on all windows of passenger cars became ~35% light transmission(meaning 35% of the light from the outside passes through to the inside)(also the darkness of the bare window has to be taken into account, because the 35% light transmission is through the window and window film[tint]). But when it comes to trucks and SUV’s, they still can only have tint that allows at least 35% light transmission on the two front windows, but the rest of the vehicle can be any level of “darkness” including completely opaque. So, as long as the two front windows of a truck or SUV are no darker than 35%, you can quite literally spray paint the rest of the windows black, but a car must not be tinted any darker than to still allow at least 35% light transmission all around. And the rule regarding tint and the “AS1 line” is just as dumb.

[lambert]

In the 90s I used to get tickets for not having a front plate in LA when the state I’m from didn’t issue them. Not worth fighting it for time lost, I just paid them. The car was legal and parked. Oh well.