License Plate Frames

When I purchased my car, there were a couple of cheesy pot metal license plate frames that had lots of bubbles in the chrome.  I had tried to figure out what the USA frames would have been in the late 60s so I could have the car look right.  This was an exercise in futility as most cars seem to have lost or replaced theirs. 

Ferrari UK did have the front frame and bracket as NOS.  Both looked like the ones on the body parts book and the Pininfarina part numbers matched, so I'm sure that they are correct.

The license plate frame that was on the car was bolted through the front edge of the bumper.  When I had the bumper re-chromed last year, I had the holes welded up and drilled the holes to hold the bracket on.  As you can see, it has curved flanges that conform to the lower part of the bumper and bolt up from below.  The frame itself is just stamped sheet brass that has been chromed.  The brass is pretty thin and it's easy to bend the edges.  As with a lot of NOS parts, this had suffered.  The edges were bent and the chrome was flaking off on one end.  I had to straighten it and have it re-chromed before it was ready for the car.  Also, there were no holes to mount it to the bracket and to mount the license plate to it, so I measured and drilled those before sending it out for chroming.

Here you can see the final product.

I did purchase a reproduction of the rear license plate from from LTE in the mid 80s.  I still don't know if it is correct or not.  The second picture is one that I've been told is an original from either a 250GTE or a 330 GT.

Reproduction	Original?

I keep hoping I'll run across a car with an original rear license plate frame so I'll know what to look for.  The body parts manual isn't much help, but from looking at the part numbers, I think that it should mount using studs in the corners with standoffs of different lengths to hold it vertical on the body under the trunk.  It's not clear if it has a backing plate or not.

Part 4 is the USA version, but the standoffs (7 and 8) apply to both the European and USA frames.  So maybe the reproduction one I already have is pretty close?

Anyway, I'll keep looking.

I finally had success in locating an original USA rear license plate frame.  A friend was in Italy and found several, all marked with the right Pininfarina part number.  Since I already had a simple bracket bolted to the car, I decided to use that.

I first had to have a backing plate so I could use the holes in the corners to hold the license plate in place.  Lowell Brown made up two backing plates and we drilled holes in the corners for some short #4 Philips oval head screws.  Here you can see the frame and the backing plate.  I also drilled and countersunk holes where I could put flat head screws to attach the whole assembly to my existing bracket.

Here's the final product.  It does look much nicer than just having the license plate by itself.

The proper mounting is to have rubber standoffs in each corner with long screws that go through the frame into holes in the body.  But this will do until I'm ready to do some more painting where I can fill in the bracket holes.

Since doing all of this, I have changed the plates to a Washington restored plate and an Italian front plate.