Question for NC legal types (driving w/o plate)

My MB is at a shop which gave me a loaner...only the loaner has no plates. He wrote up a bill of sale to tape to the back glass and told me that would be good enough. I just thought, well, it's only for a week and a half, I'll just use it to drive back and then park it until my car is done. Well, there have been delays and more delays. He insists I can drive the car like this, I really doubt I can. I would imagine at most it is only legal to drive like this while "in-transit." Anybody know for sure how it works in NC?

the car HAS to have a plate. If its a Bill of sale, it also has to have a temp plate. YOU will get the fine, not him. Also..why a bill of sale? did you buy the car? It needs a tag on it. No tag means he doesnt have insurance on the car....

I figured as much. I guess I'll just park it until it's time for me to go back down to Atlanta and hope for the best on the way down.

Get your dealer to toss on the TRANSPORT plates they keep in the service dept.

since you have a bill of sale.. go register it...... thats pretty risky on his part.. But since you have a bill of sale, i guess technically your insurance covers the car. You still need a tag though.

Well, the guy who gave me the vehicle is just an indie shop, and I really doubt Beck Imports would do that for me...especially considering that the only guy there who really knew me was 1 - in the parts department and 2 - and he has left. I guess there is a guy in used car sales who knows me, but considering that nobody in my family has ever bought a car from them I really can't ask...if I were back in MD though...sigh

How would I do that in some sort of quick fashion? I thought plates have to come in through the mail and all that (I've never bought a car, just hand-me-downs). Also, won't there be issues when I give the car back to him? Also, "ricky"? Did you grow up in the DC area and/or do you listen to the Sports Junkies?

you take your paoerwook to the DMV and they give you a tag... But then..you legally own the car and youd have to pay taxes and all that.

Heh, just looked up all the fees associated with registering a vehicle (and considering that I'm a Maryland resident with a Maryland driver's license), it'd be cheaper to just rent a car.

Are you talking about registering in NC? If so, you ain't kidding! I came from Texas where my registration was less than $100 a year and ZERO property tax.

Yup, NC. If I were in Bethesda I'd just go to the MB dealer, I'm sure they'd give me in transport plates.

I bought, ordered, my 2001 C4 on the internet via a dealer in NC. When it arrived in the US, Charleston, I pasted the dealers bill of sale in the rear window and drove it that way to Memphis, remained there for two weeks, then on to Seattle. Turned out I needed a certificate of origin to title/register the car in WA and that took another month or so. In the interim a Bellevue Motorcycle patrolman pulled up beside me and told me I needed to properly register the car, that I couldn't drive the car only with a NC dealers bill of sale. It turned out he was wrong.

I don't practice in NC but I'll see if a buddy of mine up there can give me the true rundown of this problem. In SC, you can run on a bill of sale for 45 days but they are also supposed to provide a paper tag indicating the expiration of the bill of sale, i.e. 45 days from the sale date. Most of the time, you aren't going to have a problem but you never know.

Yeah, here's what got me thinking. I needed to get some shampoo and such, and I don't know why but I decided to go to the Harris Teeter instead of the CVS, so I drove. I'm on a one lane road and it's not slow traffic, but cars are lined up one right behind the other (except me, the only person who seems to know what proper following distance is). I pass by a speed trap, and the cop pulls out as quick as he can (car behind me is so close even in a black and white he couldn't get right behind me). He stays one car behind me because there is just no way for him to get around. The second the road opens to two lanes, he gets in the left and gets next to the car behind me. Now, I was aware of his pulling out the whole time, so I was watching him in my mirror. I can tell he's looking at my plate, but then he catches a piece of paper in the rear glass, and he pulls up and kinda squints and then gets a "aw shoot" look on his face (he had probably wasted about 8 minutes following me), and does a U-turn at the intersection, presumably to go back to his speed trap spot. Now this could be pure coincidence, but it seems kinda interesting.

Me personally, I wouldn't do what you're doing, but hey what's the worst that could happen? You get into an accident, and have no liability insurance. Hmmmm. Boy, that would suck. FWIW, when I bought my first Porsche (964) the seller leant me his expired plates and I drove on those for two months while he got the title. I never got pulled. But then, I have great Karma. When I bought my current Porsche (996) again we had title issues (2 more months) and so I kept swapping the plate off of my Infiniti onto the 911. In both cases even though the car was not registered to me, at least I had insurance on it. Park the sucker. Michael

So the 3rd party insurance I have from my own policy won't cover this?

It should. Check with your carrier to make sure but most policies will cover permissive use. Just make sure that your policy limits are adequate.

I know I would be covered if I were using a car that had plates that belonged to somebody else (my dad looked into this because he's had to borrow a car for a while...long story)

And of course now that the work is just about completed, he's informed me of the pricing, which is $4k (25%) more than what I was originally told. Lesson learned, never work with somebody based on phone conversations and e-mails, explicitly written contracts only from now on for me.