How often would you see Mexican or South American numberplates on USA roads? Presumably Canadian plated cars would be fairly common in the more northerly states?

25 comments

  4. Lots of Mexican plates when I worked in Otay Mesa!

    Question asked by my gf at the time after seeing one of them: “What the… Why do they put the front plates on the back?!?”

    (It’s funny if you’ve seen one. Also… she wasn’t exactly a rocket surgeon.)

  5. Canadian plates are pretty common, both in the northern states and in southern states where some retired Canadians like to spend the winter. We call them Snowbirds because they migrate south in the fall and north in the spring. Though the term also covers Americans making the same migration.

    Most exotic is that time there was a tour van literally from Europe, with the big numbered European plate. Don’t know what country.

    I don’t think I’ve ever seen a South American plate. I suppose there aren’t as many people who could afford to ship a car for a vacation, plus you can’t drive from South America to the US, and even the large parts you can drive have nothing equivalent to the US or even Canadian highway system.

  7. Canadian plates are like 1/4 of the cars on the road during the winter months here on the FL gulf coast.

    I occasionally see Puerto Rico plates on the road here. Mexican plates are pretty rare.

  8. I see Mexican plates a lot, a couple of BC and Ontario plates but the odd one is the Hawaii plate I spotted at worlds of fun in Missouri. why would someone ship a car from Hawaii to the mainland and go to a midlevel amusement park in the midwest.

  10. Alaska.

    Occasionally, I see license plates from New Brunswick. Those are usually from powerline crews who have come down to help us after a big storm.

  11. A few weeks ago I saw a car with a local plate on one bumper and a European plate of some kind on the other. Never seen a Mexican or South American plate around here, but one of my neighbors has a truck with Hawaii plates and I’ve seen an Alaska plate as well, both of which were fairly amusing to me as someone who’s located in MD.

  12. Really low numbers. Usually they have been issued years ago and families keep them, or county officials snag them.

  13. We see tons of Mexican plates here in San Diego County, mostly from Baja California but we see plenty of other Mexican plates as well.

    Due to all the Navy here, we get the occasional Hawaii plates and plates from most other states.

    I don’t know that I’ve ever seen Canadian plates here.

  14. Mexican license plates are not uncommon to see in Southern California, especially in the San Diego area.

    I’ve seen a few plates from Hawaii on the mainland, and I always became curious as to how they brought it, especially with the costs involved for doing so.

    In California, I have seen some Canadian cars from British Columbia, but that wasn’t too unusual because they would have simply taken a drive down the West Coast. However, I’ve seen a couple cars from Quebec, and they definitely looked “exotic” on the opposite side of the continent from their origin.

    Probably nothing beats the “exotic” department more than coming across a classic-ish car with an American Samoa plate. And I saw it in a small town in the Sierra Nevada foothills, of all places. Would have been very cool to know the story behind that.

  15. I don’t know if it was legit or not, but not too long ago I did see a car with an Ōsaka license plate on the front.

    Apart from that I’ve often seen TLC plates far outside New York on multiple occasions–yellow cabs also.

  16. I’ve seen a handful of Mexican plates here in Chicago, which makes some sense given the huge Mexican immigrant population Chicago has.

    The oddest I ever saw was a Mexican taxicab with Mexican plates and all, in rural Michigan… can’t even imagine the fare!

  17. This was a long time ago but it was an Old Land Rover that was sported out with all the survival/outback gear that had right hand drive and a New South Wales plate.

  19. in ohio we have “party plates” which are yellow plates for drunk drivers

    so everytime i see someone from new york i think its a drunk person

  20. Not plates, but a couple of times I’ve seen exotic cars that are British-oriented so the wheel is on the right.

  21. I said it last time this was asked – dude a few neighborhoods over had a Chile license plate

  25. I did a big road trip out west last summer and saw a crazy amount of Alberta plates, definitely a disproportionate number relative to ontario/quebec/nb/bc

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