An aesthetically unfortunate part of car ownership is that some states require you to stick a front license plate to your vehicle. Usually it’s fine, as modern bumpers are often designed with this in mind. But then there are cars like the 2020 Toyota Supra, which has a face that isn’t the most well-suited to have a flat piece of steel on its face. What then?
This very important question was asked by a reader named James, who after spending some time taking in the new Supra’s face, wrote, “Looking at it is giving me serious concern and a slight case of anxiety. The picture makes me feel itchy. Where will they put the front plate on the Supra?”
He continued, “Is Toyota just gonna slap a plate holder on the snout of this thing and call it a day?” He then pointed out that Mazda RX-8 owners faced similar issues.
I did a quick image search for RX-8s and found that James was absolutely right. This is a beautiful blue RX-8, but with that plate there, does it not look buck-toothed? Does that plate not look grossly out of place?
The new Supra’s front bumper is a cool and sleek-looking thing, with flexed angles and neat shapes. But it’s also not very flat. It’s kind of concave. And it doesn’t look like there’s an easy spot for a license plate to go.
Jason Torchinsky is a lot cleverer at the Photoshopping than I am, but he’s on vacation. So I’ll do my best and mock up what I think a street-legal Supra face would look like–so here’s the Supra without any front plate. I wouldn’t want to cover up that face, either.
I suppose you could drill some holes in the center of the bumper and attached it that way. It’d be a painful procedure (for the owner) but then you’d also run into the buck-toothed problem.
You could also try to offset it, but I think you could only use the right side, as the left seems like it has some kind of plastic piece there that maybe shouldn’t be covered up.
Or you could tie it to the mesh grille beneath the bumper. This part gets tricky because I’m not sure how big that space actually is and if it would fit a full-sized license plate. Also it makes the car look like it’s being gagged?
Either way, it’s not attractive and I don’t look forward to seeing buck-toothed Supras running around. Of course, you could also omit the front plate and see how long it takes the cops to notice. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, though.