[mr48chev]

Back about 30 years ago Washington state put a pretty excise tax on your car every year when you registered it. Some expensive cars had over 1000 bucks excise tax on them then and it wasn't uncommon to have two or three hundred dollars tax on vehicle a couple of years old. There were a lot of guys who kept an old beater in the back yard that they registered for a minimum tax and ran the plates on their new car then. As long as the cops didn't run your plates you were good.

A buddy of mine who had a wrecking yard said that there was a number of guys buying wrecked cars with good titles and then stealing a matching car and running the plates for the wreck on the stolen car around here back on the 80's. He had one in his impound that he had towed because of that. The insurance company that had paid the owner of the stolen car had that one picked up from his yard. Who ever stole the car didn't make an attempt at changing the vin tag.