No need. New cars in California come without license plates. Instead, you get a temporary registration document affixed to the inside of your windshield and plates are mailed to you in a few weeks. It's your responsibility to put them on.

OR, you can simply not put the plates on and blend in with all the other new cars -- and there's no shortage of new cars in the Bay Area. Usually, the dealer has placed their own cardboard/paper license plate with their own company logo in its place. When I bought a new car, I just flipped it around so it was just plain white.

As long as your car is a late model and reasonably clean, with the registration stuck to the windshield, cops probably won't bother pulling you over. Parking tickets may still be issued from the VIN. If you are pulled over, you might get a dressing down and a fix-it ticket to put your plates on within x days. You can do this for as long as you'd like to press your luck.

The truth is even weirder: in California there is a "celebrity exemption" that allows one to drive around with no license tags at all, if one meets certain qualifications.

Apparently you do get a bar code (according to one 2005 article), so the exemption would be of no use against automated readers. It just keeps ordinary citizens from being able to identify your car.

No, this is a myth. Many manufacturers (including MB) put a tamper-proof sticker with the VIN (sometimes barcoded) on every body panel of the vehicle so that theft or replacement can be detected. One location is behind the rear license plate.

[1] http://pictures.dealer.com/m/mercedesbenzoftampa/1069/537b8d... [2] http://bimmerboard.com/members/q/original/VIN%20located%20be... [3] http://www.m3forum.net/m3forum/showpost.php?p=3856500&postco...

Hmm, I'm having trouble finding any evidence for the public figure exemption, so it sounds like you're right. They certainly don't seem to advertise it on the DMV site, at least.

They are also presently working on tracking and taking pictures of cars with missing plates. They'll still be able to figure out the model and year ranges. There might not be that many silver SLK with missing plates. They could also auto alert when a vehicle with missing plates is encountered.