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Wyoming
Say what you will about Wyoming, but their license plates are pretty damned cool. The design is an embossed rodeo cowboy with Devil’s Tower in the background. In fact, this is probably the most awesome of all the license plates. Wyoming should change its nickname from "The Equality State" to "The Cowboy State". Not that equality isn’t a noble idea, but I mean come on....the cowboy is waving his hat and everything!




New Jersey
New Jersey State license plates commemorate smog! The perplexing thing is not just that the fading urine-yellow background looks like grimy smog on a summer day, but that it’s hard to imagine what else it could possibly be meant to evoke? I wonder if the next design evolution will see the state nickname "Garden State" removed from the plates, replaced with a factory billowing smoke and the phrase "Secaucus: Processing America’s Chemicals for over 70 years".







Indiana
Indiana is a boring state. Very boring. Indiana license plates, while colorful, are equally boring. They show fields of green (which are actually green) with a barn in the background. They used to include the state motto, "Crossroads of America", but that apparently was too exciting for the good folks in the Hoosier state so it was replaced with the state government website (www.in.gov). You can write your own jokes from there. I always hoped they would put something cool, like "Birthplace of James Dean". But if the Indiana DMV follows the trend it will replace the state’s address with "Got Corn?"




Oregon
The Oregon plate has a Douglass Fir tree on it. This is called "playing to your strengths." If there’s one thing that Oregon has a lot of, it’s trees. Oregon could probably bump Wyoming out of its "best license plate" ranking if it included the state nickname "The Beaver State". If you aren’t proud enough to put your state’s nickname on your license plates, then you should have picked a less "funny because it has dual meanings" nickname.





Florida
These are pretty straightforward. The state outline in the background, an orange in the foreground, the state motto "Sunshine State", and the computer generated letter-number combo that make up the tag numbers. Yes, in the south we call them "auto tags", not "license plates". I remember when they used to also include the county your car was registered in, but apparently cops from the North Florida counties would routinely pull over (and even harass) cars with South Florida tags. The rationale was "anyone from Miami who is driving through Chattahoochee must be a drug dealer". Honestly, with the way the Miami PD operates, they should just issue special "drug dealer" license plates that you buy an viola!...you can move whatever you can fit in your car anywhere in the state without harassment by the cops. It’s cheaper than a bribe, and we could use it fund the "Dear God no more Jeb Bush" fund. Who says there is no such thing as a win-win situation?




Virginia
One of the most scenic states in the country also has the blandest license plate in the country. Virginia plates are plain white with blue letters. Period. Nothing else. No aircraft carriers docked at Norfolk. No Blue Ridge Mountains. No Hokie Bird! I am not sure why I expected anything more from a state whose entire population is either a slack-jaw yokel or a government stiff.