I was recently walking down the street here in Philadelphia and I stumbled across a gorgeous Porsche 944 Cabriolet that was far too nice to be street-parked here in Philadelphia. But it was indeed street-parked, and it was indeed gorgeous — or, at least, as gorgeous as a 944 Cabriolet can be, as its design is rather polarizing.
Anyway, the interesting thing about this encounter was less the fact that I stumbled upon this 944 Cabriolet and more that it had a Porsche Club of America specialty license plate. I’ve seen these plates before, but rarely. When I sent photos out to my friends, everyone got a kick out of it. So I decided to make a little post of out of it, because there are more “car club” license plates than you might think.
If you scroll through our image carousel above, you’ll see a few of them. For example, Connecticut issues a license plate for the local Ferrari club. (Because, of course Connecticut does.) And several other jurisdictions issue Porsche club plates, including the District of Columbia, Maryland and New York. Not pictured in that image is Texas, which just added a Porsche Club special plate. And I know Pennsylvania also has special plates for the BMW Club and the Mercedes-Benz Club, so it wouldn’t surprise me if other states had those, too.
This is all made possible by the fact that some jurisdictions — specifically D.C., Maryland and Pennsylvania — have laughable requirements on which groups can qualify for license plates. Maryland issues by far more plate designs than any other state, largely because virtually any non-profit group can get a plate if they simply had 25 members willing to sign up. Seriously, take a look through the listing of specialty plates in Maryland, and prepare to chuckle a bit. It’s insane. And Pennsylvania is similar.
But the point is, you can get a Porsche Club license plate in certain U.S. states, and that’s pretty cool. Find a Porsche for sale
Doug DeMuro is an automotive journalist who has written for many online and magazine publications. He once owned a Nissan Cube and a Ferrari 360 Modena. At the same time.
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I’m not sure if they still do it but Ohio hs a really special plate… If you get more than two DUI’s you got a yellow plate with red numbers. I think it meant cops where more likely to pull you over during certain hours, which is a good thing. Anyways we called it the party plate, you stayed away from those cars.
Okay but where’s my Mercury Milan Enthusiast’s Club plate???
It’s a shame that PA is standardizing all of their plates with one overall design and adding whatever organization with a little box to the side of the numbers. Even the wildlife plates are getting plain looking!
I am new PA resident and specifically chose the “Preserve our Heritage” railroad plates because it’s the last one left with its own design. Which, from your videos, you have on the AMG wagon as well!
Doug did you have one on any of your 6 porsches?
I only owned one Porsche, and when I did I lived in Georgia!
PA does have an insane amount of choices, including pretty much every college in the U.S. I think Penn State alone has three different PA plate varieties.