does anyone know if the gen4 front license plate holder scew directly onto the front bumper? I'm picking up the new car tomorrow and they already have it installed
Yes, it does. Two screws right into the smooth front bumper. I made additional damage by using screws that were too long to attach my plate to that Toyota bracket. So I now have a total of 4 holes in the front bumper. They will never be seen, but still... One note on the bracket supplied by Toyota-- it's about an inch too wide. No way (that I could find) to have the plate come flush with the edge-- even if you put it in a nice decorative frame first.
I put mine on yesterday. I bought a frame on amazon and I had a black license plate bracket already mounted onto the car. I just had to remove the dealer plate and screw in the new license plate to the bracket.
Here is mine. The bracket came with the car, and the frame was from Custom Front License Plates, Personalized Vanity Auto Plate -LICENSEPLATES.TV. Got a frame with a special URL etched in black on silver from these guys for our 2010 and it looks new 6 years later. Just black for the 2016. Frame looks perfect on the back of the Car, but on the front you can see that Toyota's bracket is a bit too wid-- it extends a good 1/2" beyond the edge of the frame. Did you get your retro plates? Yellow on black, right?
When I get my car, I will insist that the front plate or even the mount is not attached. When I bought my current car, the dealership clearly outsourced the mounting of front license plates to a team of blind, drunk monkeys. Since I didn't know they mounted the plate, I didn't notice until I got home: someone had screwed the plate directly into the front bumper, off-center and crooked. I was livid! Let this serve as a lesson to everyone: do a complete walk-around not only when you first receive the car but again before you drive it off the lot. The only reason I didn't drive the 20 miles back to the dealership was because there was absolutely no way to prove that I didn't do it. I deemed it very unlikely that the drunk monkey would raise his hand and say, "yeah, I'm the blind idiot who did that." The only saving grace is that it was close enough to center that the mount covers the holes. Next time, they replace the bumper.
That is good to know, the dealer offered to drill holes into my front bumper for the plate but I checked my local laws and realized it wasn't required (unless an existing mount was there).
All right guys, you are not attaching the plate mount to the bumper. You are attaching it to the -bumper cover-. I know you think it's semantics but the actual bumper is under there (behind about 1" of foam) and it's steel, not plastic. When I got Pearl S some dumb kid at the dealer mounted the plate holder to the front bumper cover. We don't have front plates in Alberta. I was silly enough to ask what he was thinking. Obviously he wasn't! However, my Amateur radio call sign plates do come in pairs, so I was able to make use of his stupidity, and he did use the marked positions to drill the holes.
