Tips for sharing Pre-1922 car information?
 

Well this is definitely not supercar related, but perhaps the brain trust on this site can offer suggestions for disbursing some data I happen to have in my possession?

I own a California Automobile Registration book from 1922, and now that it’s 2022 I’m prompted to finally do something more productive with it. Picked it up somewhere years ago and never did come up with a way to get rich off the info, but at least I have managed to help a few random car owners along the way over the decades.

This happens to be volume #3, which lists every 1922 and older car that was issued a 1922 California license plate in the 250,001 – 340,000 number range (out of maybe 900,000?)? It shows the issued license plate number, year of the vehicle, the engine number (which I believe was typically used as the VIN), Make and Model, as well as the registered owners name and address.

I’m guessing most of these vehicles don’t exist anymore, but for the handful of cars that are still around, it would be cool to share this data with their current owners…

For the 1922 Model year cars that are listed, this probably shows the original owner / purchasers name and address. We have trouble finding original owner info for our 50-60 year old cars, imagine searching for something that’s a 100 years old…

I’ve seen pretty much every kind of car imaginable in this book… from common ones to rare and valuable. Stutz, Auburn, REO, Hupmobile, Rolls Royce, Overland, Hudson, Max, Sax, etc… With addresses from the SF bay area to the Hollywood Hills…

I’m not going to scan the pages or try and type 90,000 cars worth of info, so what can I do with this interesting bit of history (besides give the book to Jay Leno)? Seems to be a complete waste of useful data just sitting on my bookcase….

Very cool. Will take some thought...

Wow, that is cool hubleyman. How about donating it or loaning it to the AACA Museum in Hershey? I'm sure a lot of Classic Car buffs would go nuts over something like that and they get thousands of visitors a year.

That's a great idea and is the kind of suggestion I was hoping for. A place like that might take the time to extract the data and be able to share it in some fashion...

For those who always wondered how many vehicle owners paid registration in CA in 1921, take a peak at the summary page.

Looks like Ralphs Grocery Co, in Los Angeles had a fleet of Fords...

Charlie

Thanks for sharing, that is really neat.

Wow! Not a bad income for the state as that equates to $93,731,902.80 in 2022 dollars. I wonder what their fees total today considering how many tens of thousands more cars on the road there today.

What I find amazing is that 100 years ago there were ~ 211,000 cars, 11,000 trucks, and almost 6,000 motorcycles registered in LA! Wow!

1922 California Info...