Patent Plate Minutiae

[Peter Naulls]

An interesting post. Our car has always had a repro plate and I had never noticed the difference in manufacture. Almost certainly the originals were acid etched, it's a process I use frequently in the course of my work.

   

[JonE]

Thank you Henry. Just to confirm, I can assume these are 1931 cars?

Interesting to note, although they both contain the same information, they are quite a different 'design'.

are you sure they are quite a different design? Perhaps more detailed images would help. If one rubbed the blacker one down with fine wire wool, would not the black be left around the edges of the relief upstands as shown by the other one? The cleaner one has obviously been restored/cleaned and refitted hence the background, I'm imagining.

[Hugh Barnes]

Take a closer look John. For example, compare the wording 'The Austin Motor Company' at the base...

[Tony Griffiths]

The original plate on our 1934 Ruby. Car No. ARQ1382

[Mick Hobday]

It might be useful to include detail photos of repro patent plates for comparison.  I don't have any myself, but are they identical to the originals, or do they have slightly different spacing or font? 
I believe repro plates were available in the 1960s, with 60-odd years of patina some of these might now be almost indistinguishable from originals.

[JonE]

Take a closer look John. For example, compare the wording 'The Austin Motor Company' at the base...

yes, agreed! And that makes a nice descriptor for the differences between those two variants of plate then. Mick's point is very good. What will perhaps happen is you will get a list of x with each of those having y variants... and then the forensic case will build up for which are definitely original and which reproduction amongst all found.
Will be interesting to hear the differences in profile in the two plates Henry has i.e. is is down to the amount of acid exposure, or could one be a different process?

[Malcolm Parker]

The two 1931 patent plates are clearly different.   The letters are differently sized and one has two rows of ditto marks in the patent no. column whereas the other has only one.

[Mike Costigan]

At least some of these differences could be down to individual suppliers. I would guess that the Austin Motor Company did not have in-house acid-etching facilities, so these were almost certainly sourced from outside the factory. Typically a basic specification would have been drawn up, but details (such as type-face or number of 'dittos') may be at the discretion of the manufacturer; if the AMC used more than one supplier, it's possible they would end up with the same product but with these detail differences.

[bystander]

Austin's almost certainly outsourced this type of work to specialist manufacturers in the Birmingham area. One such was E. Rudd & Co., founded in 1890. A souvenir booklet that they put out in 1990 to celebrate 100 years in business stated amongst other early activities that they were supplying badges and nameplates to The Austin Motor Co. in 1905, and this very probably was ongoing and including dashboard plates.

[Colin Morgan]

Rudd MacNamara are still there...

https://www.ruddmacnamara.com/about