Rootes Dealer license Frame

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leepear

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My new Tiger was owned by a Rootes Dealer in Southern California. Not sure which one. I would like an original license frame for the car. Could you let me know which Dealers sold Tigers and I will begin my search. In the unlikely chance that a member has an extra license frame I would be very interested. Thanks Lee
 
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Rootes

There are several ads which show the listings of the dealers. I have a "How much can Karen Take?" it show the only one guys seem to care about Hollywood Sports Cars and a whole gaggle of the dealerships.

The ad is Life magazine size and the copy is hard to read in person but you can have it if you come to the fix in if not it'll be 20 bucks )

You can get a CAT one for Cheap from Parts Guru Bill The Hollywood Sports Cars is a eBay couple hundred item.
 
Love you guys but dont want a CAT frame. You have seen my beater and know it needs a nice worn frame to match the rest.
 
leepear said:
My new Tiger was owned by a Roots Dealer in Southern California. Not sure which one. I would like an original license frame for the car. Could you let me know which Dealers sold Tigers and I will begin my search. In the unlikely chance that a member has an extra license frame I would be very interested. Thanks Lee
Click to expand...

I bought my Tiger new from California Sports Cars in Santa Ana in 1967. I saw one of their frames on ebay not too long ago for a rediculous amount of money. I still have the one for the rear plate (and obviously want to keep). The front one was snagged and broken off by a concrete parking space divider after a couple of months of ownership. Some grocery store lot, something like Alpha Beta? Anyway, guess it hung a little lower in the front than I expected!:)

Gene
 
Zinc

Aren't they? If you had a model be pretty easy to have your fab guy cook up a 100 or so. Mine came from a listed dealership on the ads I've seen not as sexy as California or Hollywood Sports Cars, Oceanside catered to the Marine base camp Pendelton nearby. The VW and Porsche ones are crazy money too. About 15 years ago I sold a car with a Vel's Parnelli Jones Ford Torrance frame on it DOH
 
Ours has been in the family from new and was purchased from California Sports Cars, Santa Ana. The frame on Ebay had red lettering but this is white. TBON has a complete listing of dealers.
 
Beautiful original plate! I cant afford a BON but this discussion and pictures of the old frames is pretty fun to see. There may even be a way to find out where my Tiger was originally purchased and I will chase that frame. In the mean time post more pictures of frames. I love to see the original stuff. Lee
 
My frame did have the red lettering on it, like the one on ebay, at least for the top part. When I got around to touching it up a few years ago, the bottom part was pretty much all white with just a few flecks of color. The letters could have been either red or blue, I was not sure. I went ahead and touched up all the letters in red, and was so a bit relieved to see the one on ebay was the same.

Gene

BTW, my car is also Mediterranean Blue:)
 
I had a very famous Oldsmobile purchased new at Hansel Oldsmobile in Fullerton. I found a pair of license frames on ebay. In 1970 Hansel Olds was just Hansel Olds. In the 80s they added GMC and the frame was changed to Olds GMC. I had to use the Olds GMC frames on my car. There is a process to rechrome pot metal without chrome. The frames came out beautiful. The car was so nice I could not use the frames as is. There are two attachments showing the restored plate and a paper plate that was displayed with the car at concourse shows. Lee
 
It took me 16 years to find the one for my Shelby--it was Webster Ford and went out of business in 1967......it was a long search. There are several license frame guys on ebay that should be able to help you out. Good luck.
 
BillRo said:
Ours has been in the family from new and was purchased from California Sports Cars, Santa Ana. The frame on Ebay had red lettering but this is white. TBON has a complete listing of dealers.
Click to expand...

Bill,
Why does your plate have a 1965 & a 1966 sticker on it - and no month sticker?

John
 
A bit complicated. The car was bought originally by my bro-in-law in 1966 but was a '65 car and as such the black plate had a '66 sticker. There were no month stickers at the time and you renewed annually. That was a big workload for DMV so they invented the month deal later. Jim took the car to the family home in IL and stored it for his stint in Viet-Nam. He took off the CA black plate with the '66 sticker and stashed them in the rafters of the IL garage and put on IL plates. He returned to CA, the black plates were forgotten and he got new CA blue plates in about '72.

In about '75 he transferred the car to his sister and when I married her in '78 I became the guardian of the car. I did not like the car being registered as a '66 when it was built in '65 so I had the DMV change it to '65 (another story).

When the parents died we went back to clean out the IL house and low and behold, unearthed a set of pristine black plates with a '66 sticker. Along came the CA Year of Manufacture law which allowed you put black plates back on '60s cars, BUT you must have the correct sticker. I now have a '65 car with plates for a '66. So an Ebay seller provided a nice '65 sticker, the DMV is now happy and I was allowed to put the cars original plates back on the car for a price (another long story)

I made a little black aluminum plate that fits over the old plate's stickers with current year and month stickers for road use, and I can take it off for shows.
 
Well cadreamn67 and Ebay tell me I need to paint my California Sports Cars lettering red. What a useful thread!
 
SoCal Rootes Dealers:

Knox Motors, Alhambra
Stillwell's Sports Car City, Anaheim
Beverly Hills Sports Cars, Beverly Hills
Sweet William, Buena Park
Barney Motor Sales, Burbank
Carnahan & Norton, Claremont
Continental Car Imports, Culver City
Frank Millard Sports Cars, Encino
Danyluk Motors, Glendale
Import Auto, Long Beach
Imperial Motor Car, Larry Reed Inc., Lew Spencer Imports Inc., High Performance Motors, Williamson Motors, all Los Angeles
Cliffort T. Nutt, Monrovia
Del-Kraft Inc., Norwalk
British Motorcars, Oceanside
Vincent Motors, Pasadena
Frank White Imports, Pomona
Econo Sports Car, Riverside
California Sports Cars, Santa Ana
Kramer Motors, Santa Monica
Holiday Motors Inc., Sherman Oaks
Nick Pastor, South Gate
Haste & Hirsty Inc., Studio City
Larry Reed Sports Cars, Torrance
Hughes Motors, Ventura

Not many of these still operating and apparently Hollywood Sports Cars was not a Rootes dealer. Perhaps Kramer still has frames.
 
Thanks for taking the time to post the dealers. Now I need to find the dealer where my car was purchased and a frame to go with the car. Very informative thread for me. lee
 
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Rootes dealers

How would somebody go about finding what dealer their car came from? Is it something you have the DMV look into for you? Would be pretty cool to see where my car came from....

Kyle
 
You will need to get it from a prior owner. My car was bought from a second owner and he thinks Long Beach or one of the two Orange County dealerships. So I have a 33% chance of being correct with my car. Lee
 
Lee--get whatever frame is available and then tell everyone that's where it was sold.... :)
 
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