Black Plate Cars Ad Nauseum

[Mark McDonald <tomswift@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

It has been pointed out to me that a car having a black plate on it is
no guarantee of single ownership, only that the car has been registered
its whole life in California (although I guess even that isn't true, if
you can get the black plates on it later).

I guess this is a classic case of the dictionary definition of a term
vs. the connotation of a term-- or what the term implies, not just what
it literally means.  In strict dictionary definition terms, yes, I
suppose the term "black plate car" only means that a car has old black
California plates on it, and has presumably spent most of its life in
California.

However, the connotation of this term is something else.  The first time
I heard this phrase it was uttered by a friend of mine as if he had
found a secret cache of some kind of illegal, but highly valuable,
substance-- "I heard there's this low mileage, black plate ------
sitting in the back of this garage in San Pedro.  Hasn't been driven
since 1967.  You wanna go see it?"

I think this term, whenever it first got started, was taken to mean a
car that was 1) a survivor, 2) relatively unmolested, 3) usually low
mileage, 4) rustfree, and 6) very, very rare.  If you found a "genuine"
black plate car you were probably buying from the first or 2nd owner and
you were getting a car that was a real gem-- even if it needed
polishing.  At least, that's the way it seemed to me.

However, as time went on, the usage of this term got to be more common
and unscrupulous sellers started applying it to anything on 4 wheels.
When I lived in California I saw black plates on cars that were ready
for the junkyard.  I also saw cars advertized as black plate cars that
didn't even have black plates!  They may have when the car was new, but
no more!

Anyway, I don't think this term means what it used to anymore-- it's no
longer an indication of a rare gem hidden away in somebody's backyard,
it's just another buzzword.

Mark