Michigan plates for 1931

sidhartha

sidhartha

Senior Member
These two Michigan plates were on my Tudor when I bought it. It is interesting to me that they should be different sizes. I suppose it is because of the extra digits for the larger number on the bigger plate. There must've been a lot of cars registered that year. Anybody have other explanations?

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I visited a plate vendor in Michigan and saw the same thing this weekend, never had seen that before.
 
What little I know is that the plates had a third, smaller size when there were only 5 digits. Prior to the SAE standardizing the North American License plate size, issuers could do practically anything they wanted as far as the outside dimensions. The '31 plates were an exercise in economy where they stamped them out of a thinner gage of metal. In previous years, I believe Michigan issued a Diamond M symbol on the plate when they exceeded a million registrations.
 
Most states that I have seen did different sizes depending on the number of digits in the plate. I believe the standard plate size of 6X12 for North America went into effect in 1957.

Here is a set of 1952 Illinois vehicle plates showing the different sizes from a single digit up to the seven digit plates. Not just a depression era thing.

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Some of the digits on the left of the five and six digit plates are obscured, sorry about that.

-Tim
 
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