Washington’s biggest sports rivalry: University of Washington vs Washington State University. Purple vs crimson, west vs east, urban vs rural. Huskies and Cougars also compete for representation on Washington bumpers through their optional license plates. In this arena, however one’s loyalties or preferences might fall, there has always been a clear winner, and it’s not even close.
The Apple Cup of License Plates
Unfortunately for Husky fans, there is a lot more crimson than purple on the roads of Washington. Washington State University license plates outnumber University of Washington plates by more than double.
Why does WSU outsell UW by almost two to one, when UW is a significantly larger school? Some explanations are that UW, based in Seattle, competes with other Seattle sports teams (the Mariners, Seahawks, Sounders, Storm, and Kraken all currently offer license plate options), although the volume disparity has been strong since Day 1, before any of the “competing” license plates existed; others have suggested that WSU is a larger cultural anchor, and more commonly part of one’s identity, due to its location in rural eastern Washington, while UW is but one part of a major metropolis.
Whatever the underlying reasons, for thirty years Cougars have been far more prone to display their pride on their bumpers than Huskies.
Bumper competition since 1995
The 1990s was a boom time for optional special-design license plates, where just about every state was giving its motorists options to pay an extra fee for a prettier design, or to support specific causes and organizations. In Washington state, at the halfway point of the decade there was exactly one option available to the general public, and that was for square dancing (yes, really), which, as the state’s official dance, had enough influential supporters to advocate for a special license plate that was made available in 1993.
In March 1994, the state legislature authorized special license plates for the six public universities in the state: the University of Washington (UW), Washington State University (WSU), Western Washington University (WWU), Central Washington University (CWU), Eastern Washington University (EWU), and The Evergreen State College (TESC). The UW and WSU designs were first to debut, in 1995, with the others following in 1996.
The UW and WSU plates were available to the public at the start of July 1995. Then-Governor Mike Lowry, a Cougar grad, purchased a WSU plate on the first day of availability, and a DOL spokesperson told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that Lowry “said he’d be back sometime soon to get a Huskies plate for his wife, a University of Washington of grad.” One can wonder if the loyal Cougar might have “forgotten” to follow up on the UW plate.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported in 1996 that the Cougars had been the clear victors right out the gate, and not just because of Governor Lowry’s prioritizing WSU on his personal cars: on the first day of availability, 158 WSU plates were issued, and only 38 UW. By October 1995, three months after they debuted, it was WSU 2,535 – UW 1,465. The Huskies never recovered their deficit.
The WSU plate’s popularity quickly created logistical problems for the state. Of the six collegiate plates, only UW was designed for five-digit numbers; the others all had room for four. It took only a few years until WSU sold its 9,999th license plate, running out of numbers for the original design. The state’s solution was to move the logo to the right side and start the numbering over again (in the licensing system, the stacked letter prefix is part of the registration number, which has a maximum of seven digits; the initial design would have an official registration number of WSU1234, while the updated format would be 1234WSU, allowing the same displayed number without duplicating the registration).
WSU was the only collegiate plate to run into this issue, and it wouldn’t be the last time.
Shortly after the number reset, WSU plates were affected by a brief anomaly in Washington state license plates. In 1998, as the state was transitioning from the original Mt. Rainier standard-issue design to the Evergreen State base, it manufactured a number of original-design license plate blanks with the new Evergreen-style stamping, creating an oddball hybrid with the original state name style sans an embossed border (Western and Central plates also had small quantities produced this way).
All of the collegiate license plates moved to the Evergreen State style in 1998, with the upper-left, block-lettered state name and no embossed border.
In 2005, all personalized and special design issues went flat as the state adopted digital license plate printing.
After WSU numbers reached 9999 again, letter prefixes and suffixes were added to the registration format to avoid running out of combinations.
By virtue of its lower sales volume and its design accommodating five-digit numbers, the UW plates were subject to fewer formatting evolutions driven by registration number constraints. Changes in the University’s design and branding programs made their way onto the license plates, however, and resulted in several different looks over the years.
In 2001, the University of Washington logo was updated to a sleeker husky design through a partnership with Nike. That collaboration influenced the logo’s resemblance to the famed Nike swoosh, an unpopular and controversial feature. The UW license plate design was concurrently updated to reflect the logo change (along with the bottom slogan). This was a mere design update and did not represent a new series; numbering picked up where the old design ended.
Like the WSU plates, these evolved along with manufacturing and design changes for all of Washington’s license plates, going flat in 2005. The designs were unchanged, but embossed characters were eliminated.
The University of Washington plates are known to have a rare manufacturing variant for a small number of early-issue flat plates: the registration number was printed in a dark blue, similar to the embossed numbers, instead of the black font that is used for flat-printed plates.
After about a decade on the roads, complete redesigns were in store for both schools.
New Designs: UW
In 2003, Washington state passed legislation revoking the requirement that special license plates use the standard Mt. Rainier background.
This coincided with the state’s adoption of digital license plate printing (resulting in flat license plates) for specialty and many non-standard license types. In 2006, more than a dozen brand-new specialty plate designs debuted.
The University of Washington was the first entity with an existing specialty plate to redesign its issue, which coincided with the university’s branding update to the block “W” logo.
Designed by students in the UW School of Art, the plate featured a fade-out university seal in the background, with a bold purple and gold theme. This was not just a redesign; it was an all-new license plate series, with numbering starting over at 0000A. The legacy Rainier-based designs continued to be valid (and can still be found on cars today).
For the first time, personalized registrations of up to seven characters could be used on all optional design license plates. Many people took note that the “W” graphic provided opportunities to game the system and spell longer words than might have otherwise been allowed, or to create a combination that might not have made it past the state review process (one person ordered “EINER” on this design to pair with the leading W, which quickly became internet famous).
In November 2013, the design was updated again, with an even more striking all-purple background and a gold “W.” This may have been partly to compete graphically with WSU’s all-crimson plates, which had launched a few years earlier and continued to outsell UW plates by a large margin.
This design continues today, although like many optional plates, it’s undergone small tweaks by the Department of Licensing. A white border was added, and the registration font has alternated between a narrow typeface and the standard, wider numbers, as has also been the case on many other designs.
New Designs: WSU
Washington State University stuck with the original design for much longer.
By the beginning of the 2010s, most optional design license plates in Washington had abandoned the Mt. Rainier-based style in favor of full graphics. WSU took the plunge with a solid crimson background and a white logo that debuted in February 2012.
Unlike UW’s plates, the WSU design has changed little. The logo has continued to move from left to right as numbering series were used up (letters are used to create more unique registrations).
Motorcycles
Since 2006, optional license plate designs have been available for motorcycles. These have always sold in small numbers and are rare sights on the roads.
Below are the current designs for each school. Numbering for UW began at 0000Z and WSU at Z500:
The license plate competition between the two schools may never see the trophy go to UW. Husky fans can find solace in the fact that most people just care about the football, and not the license plates.
Danny's License Plates 