Mercedes?

[tony barnhill]

We have 3 offices in my county...most well populated counties have multiple offices.

 

[Brooklands]

In PA we can go to a privately owned business who does the paperwork and issues the plates for the State if we want. There is an insurance agency within a mile of my house where I did ours, and later went to file the paperwork for Classic plates after the car had been here for a year. That was all done with photographs. They do a lot of things wrong though such as not allowing the car license plate to show in the photos, meaning I could have filed photos found on the internet...

 

[tony barnhill]

Wonder why license plates can't show in photos?

 

[swift6]

Well, I can't blame the DMV staff; they have an impossible job. And it's not just paper-heavy bureaucracy.

Have to agree with that. In Colorado license plates, taxes, fee's etc... are handled by the County Clerks office. The DMV offices handle testing and licensing, and hearing officers for particular traffic infractions. Larimer County has three County Clerk offices. The employees of the COunty Clerks office seem to get yelled at all day long by people tired of waiting in line, or complaining about not having all the paperwork that they need.

When I had a title problem on my TR8, I went in and smiled and kept a good/friendly demeanor the entire time. Even on the third (final trip). The result was actually quite noticeable. They were even going above and beyond what they needed to do to resolve the issue. They even remembered me when I went in a year later for another unrelated issue.

 

[JPSmit]

As an aside - waiting in line story. Shortly after we moved to Florida the church wanted to hire my wife - this meant switching from an R2 to and R1 (religious workers permit) Went to Immigration office - waited forever - got to front of line were told that it was $140 and 4-6 months to process (and same for my son to get his R2 which meant he was "allowed" to register for school - he'd been going for 4 months at that point) OR they said you can leave the country and reenter and apply at the border.

So, we put both on a plane, flew to Buffalo, left the country, turned around, drove back in - 20 minutes and $20 later all the paperwork is done. Total cost (including air) was less than cost to apply Orlando. Total time from the curb at Orlando airport - fly to Buffalo - rent a car - leave the country - return - process the paperwork was less than it took to get to the front of the line at the Immigration office in the first place.

And yes, Canadian immigration is just as bizarre.

 

[drooartz]

Edit: Utah has about 2.7 million people. There are 29 DMV offices (I think ...).

An advantage of a small population spread out over a large area. We've got a DMV office in my county (about 3 miles from my house), and I've never seen a line longer than 2 people there. Driver's license place is similar. The main city in Utah (Salt Lake) is much different -- there I've waited quite some time in line.

I've generally found the folks to be helpful and friendly; with a bit of patience and a smile on my part all goes well.

 

[Silverghost]

To register (get plates) for a 20+ year old car here in Connecticut you only need VIN verification.

Step one: go to DMV and stand in line for an hour to get a number for a different line, show your BOS and pay your sales tax, then get a cardboard 21-day temp plate, so you can drive the car legally to the DMV office next day they're open.

On that second day, you drive the car (with the temp plate) to DMV and park it.

Then you have to stand in line for an hour, so you can get a number to stand in another line for two hours, where you then get a form to fill out and take to the VIN desk, where you sit for another hour until the inspector walks with you to verify the VIN.

Once you have the VIN verification slip signed by the inspector, you then go back to wait again in the *first* line, to get a number to wait in the second line, so you can show your VIN slip, pay your sales tax and reg. fee, and get your license plates.

System was set up by Franz Kafka, in a drug-induced coma. And a drug-induced coma is what you end up with, after going through the procedure.

Onward through the fog.
Tom

That reminded me of this:

"Kids, this-piece-of-paper's-got-47-words-37-sentences-58-words-we-wanna-
know-details-of-the-crime-time-of-the-crime-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-
you-gotta-say-pertaining-to-and-about-the-crime-I-want-to-know-arresting-
officer's-name-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-you-gotta-say", and talked for
forty-five minutes and nobody understood a word that he said, but we had
fun filling out the forms and playing with the pencils on the bench there,
and I filled out the massacre with the four part harmony, and wrote it
down there, just like it was, and everything was fine and I put down the
pencil, and I turned over the piece of paper, and there, there on the
other side, in the middle of the other side, away from everything else on
the other side, in parentheses, capital letters, quotated, read the
following words:

("KID, HAVE YOU REHABILITATED YOURSELF?")"

Which of course leads to this:

"And the only reason I'm
singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar
situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if your in a
situation like that there's only one thing you can do and that's walk into
the <DMV> wherever you are ,just walk in say "<Mr/s. DMV>, You can get
anything you want, at Alice's restaurant.". And walk out. You know, if
one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and
they won't take <his registration>. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony,
they may think they're both crazy and they won't take either of <their registrations>.
And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in
singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an
organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said
fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and
walking out. And friends they may thinks it's a movement."

:laugh:

 

[JPSmit]

:lol:

You can get anything you want at Alice's restaurant.
(excepting Alice)

(Arlo plays Disney every year now - always amazes me since if there ever was "working for the Man" surely that would be working for Disney.)

 

[JPSmit]

Saw this

https://auto.indavideo.hu/video/Az_50-es_60-as_evek_Mercedesei

 

[NutmegCT]

That is quite a video. And searching for Mercedes on YouTube (or whatever) brings up a *lot* of memories.

One of my favorites:

ivWUxz4" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"> </embed></object>

The first one you see in the film is like the one I'm working on.

 

[JPSmit]

Also very cool. was watching these today

Not Mercedes, Tatra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn_FzG2e-FM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP_7WyAqRps&feature=related

How do you imbed video?