No NASCAR Licenese Plates in Alabama: Alabama state officials didn’t get enough orders after one year to begin production of tags saluting NASCAR drivers such as Dale Earnhardt Sr., Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon and the Alabama Gang. “It’s off the table,” state Sen. Gerald Dial, chairman of the Legislature’s license plate oversight committee, said Thursday. Other states are still upbeat about the tags. The legislatures in South Carolina and Mississippi have approved sales, with Mississippi to begin July 1. South Carolina hasn’t set a date because the tag is still under development, public safety spokeswoman Sherri Iacobelli said. Race Plate Marketing, a NASCAR licensing company, originally introduced the NASCAR driver tags in West Virginia in 2000. Last spring, the company got Alabama’s license plate oversight committee to approve them for sale. Tags with the names, numbers and colors of more than 20 of NASCAR’s top drivers were available for order. Alabama’s law on specialty license plates mandates that production won’t begin unless 1,000 motorists put up a $50 deposit within a one-year period. The end of the sales period was May 31. Peytie Bowen, who tracks sales for the state comptroller’s office, said 182 tags were ordered in the first 11 months. Not all counties have reported for May, but so far only five more orders have come in for that month. The $50-a-year tags were supposed to raise money for improvements at the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in Talladega and to purchase new tag-making equipment for the state prison system. Officials at the Motorsports Hall of Fame were disappointed in the lack of orders, especially after more than 15,000 were sold in West Virginia. Dial, who’s also chairman of the board of the Motorsports Hall of Fame, said the economic slowdown hurt sales, and he might try again once the economy picks up.(Daytona Beach News Journal/AP)(6-21-2002)
