by Adam_Winstone » Sat Jun 06, 2015 2:36 pm
^... fair enough but I love the stick on type and have recently fitted them to 2 of my bikes.
Each to their own but I find myself disliking pressed alloy plates more and more. If you look at what both cars and bikes were running back in the 50s and 60s, very, very few actually had pressed alloy plates, with the majority having flat black plates with white sticker numbers/letters on them or the 3D wedge type plastic numbers/letters that get fixed through holes and 'badge clips'. There would be very few people that went out and bought an economical mode of transport, then spent 10 times as much on pressed plates than the common options would cost you. Whereas you have to order pressed plates, you could go into any car/bike dealer of the day and simply buy the digits that you needed... I have 2 wall mounted motorbike/scooter sticker trays that I bought from a 50s-70s UK Lambretta dealer.
For my sins/stupidity, I also bought a 71 MGB GT from the same family that had the Lambretta dealership, which now sees me do the very occasional MG event. As with the scooter scene, you quickly note that many of the original cars have sticker/3D digit type original plates but that all the gleaming restored cars have pressed metal plates. After a while these pressed plates start to look like the nasty shiny bling that you see on so many naff badly restored machines, regardless of how much money might have been spent on it. If you are looking for a top quality resto then the type of plate that would actually have been fitted in the 50s-60s is much better than a shiny plate that would more likely have been fitted to a resto from the 90s onwards!
Each to their own... and I do have pressed metal plates fitted to some of my scoots. Indeed, I have an original 71 GP with the original dealer fitted black on wht pressed front plates and blk on yellow rear, so it does go to show that there is a mixed bag of originals and it really is just a matter of opinion and choice. For me... wht on black stickers (or the correct size and font) are what I tend to plump for... cheap, easy to fit (no holes needed), and available off the shelf, which is why they were the original choice for most back in the day.
Adam