Peter F. Madsen
License plate collector and historian
11/13/1996
It has come to my attention that collector car owners are having difficulty in getting their 1965 and 1966 cars licensed under the year-of-manufacture program in Washington because of uncertainty on the part of Department of Licensing personnel as to what types of plates were issued in those years. I believe that the best way to help everyone involved is to give as detailed as possible a history of the passenger car license plates that were issued in 1965 and 1966.
First, the county key program was still in effect; with A-- prefixes being issued from King County, B-- from Pierce, etc. Except for Island County, the letters I, O, and Q were omitted from the prefixes because of their similarity to the numbers 1 and 0. By the end of 1964 it was clear that King County was going to run out of prefixes during 1965, because the whole AAA-AZZ series would be used up. Therefore the decision was made to issue A prefixes using I, O, and Q. After the AZZ plates had been issued in early 1965, prefixes using I, O, and Q were issued in this order: AOA-AOZ, AIA-AIZ, AQA-AQZ, AAI-AZI, AAO-AZO, and AAQ-AZQ. All of these prefixes had been used up by sometime in 1967, and the OAA-OZZ series was issued next.
Second, the prefix at which the legend changed from WASH. 63 to WASHINGTON has to be addressed. For King County I believe that the changeover occurred somewhere between AYZ and AZC. In Pierce County the changeover was at BHL. The Kitsap county changeover occurred at KUA. I should make it clear here that this was a running change, and that the WASHINGTON plates didn't go on sale until stocks of WASH. 63 types were exhausted. (Some counties never issued WASHINGTON types. Mason County was one of these, and I suspect that Stevens County was also; I have seen a 1967 Buick with its original WASH. 63 Stevens County plates still mounted.)
I don't have many plates from those years that have their original stickers, but I'll give what data I have, and I believe that this information will help. I registered a 1965 Barracuda in either February or March 1965 on AZN 669, a WASHINGTON plate. I had a 1965 Chrysler 300L that was registered new in Auburn in June 1965 on WASHINGTON plate AOJ 299. 1 owned a 1965 Valiant that was registered new in Seattle in May or June 1965 on WASHINGTON plate AOK 707. My parents registered a new Volkswagen in King County in early 1966 on WASHINGTON plate ALI 003. Kent Sullivan has a 1966 Corvair that appears to have been registered new in Kent in June 1966 on a WASHINGTON plate with an AAO prefix. I have these WASHINGTON plates in my collection in original condition: AZC 485 ('65), ARO 644 ('66), BHR 718 ('65), BHS 566 ('65), BJA 515 ('65), CGS 983 ('66), CHY 130 ('67), KVD 246 ('67), and PAW 187 ('66).
Based on this information, I believe that it is historically accurate to license a 1965 or 1966 model car on a '65 or '66 WASHINGTON plate, since at a minimum these were in use starting in early 1965 in King County, by mid-1965 in Pierce County, and at least by 1966 in Spokane and Whitman Counties. I believe that they were generally in use in the most populous counties by 1966.
Aside from the 1965-66 situation, I should add a couple of bits of information that I believe would help car collectors in general in their efforts to register their cars on year-of-manufacture plates.
The main Department of Licensing offices in Seattle and Tacoma have wall charts that show color photographs of Washington license plates for every year. (Paul Petrinovich and I collaborated on these charts; he did the photography and a lot of the plates are mine.) I suspect that car enthusiasts will have an easier time licensing a collector car at these main offices than at a lot of field offices where the only thing the agents have to go by is the black-and-white chart put out by the state.
Speaking of that chart, it has a few errors. The 1947 plates are green on shiny uncoated aluminum, not green on gray. The 1949 plates are green on gray-appearing acid-etched uncoated aluminum, not green on white.
I should also mention that reproduction (or counterfeit, depending on one's viewpoint) stickers and tabs are being sold at old-car swap meets. I have seen stickers for both truck and passenger for 1967 that all have the same serial number (839808), 1958s with no serial number but with rounder numbers than the real thing, and 1959-62 and 1964-66 passenger and truck stickers. These later years all have the same serial number (8398080). Also, I have seen reproduction '55 and '56 aluminum tabs.