I'm pissed at GM right now... not homicidally pissed, mind you, just a little more so than the usual low level annoyance at their craptastic products. However, this is an example of why people continue to think that their products are cheap junk.
My company car is a current body Impala, it's OK for what it is. However, it's not a high end car, so while I like to keep it looking nice, it gets hand washed exactly once a year, immediately before its annual waxing. Any other time that it starts looking a little dirty, it gets run through an automatic car wash.
Why does this piss me off at GM? Because the front license plate bracket is an embarrassing piece of shit. It's this molded plastic contraption that screws to the plastic front bumper fascia with two pathetic little screws, flops around loosely, and worse yet, is constructed so that it is impossible to put a proper license plate frame on your front plate, so that you're always running the risk of having the front plate bent into a pretzel by the car wash rollers. (three guesses why I'm posting this rant today; first two don't count.) In fact, the whole thing is so tenuous, I'm wondering if I shouldn't try to figure out a way to attach it to the lower grille as well as the current two screws into thin plastic so the whole thing doesn't get ripped off in the car wash, because now that I've taken it off and looked at it, I'm really surprised that it hasn't come off already.
Come on, GM. I know that front license plates look like shit. However, my state requires them, so to be a good law-abiding citizen I have to use them. Please at least recognize this fact and don't hand off the design of the front plate brackets to one of your junior engineer's children.
For an example of how a proper license plate bracket should be constructed, I recommend to you any number of plate brackets available on the aftermarket or as supplied by any number of other manufacturers. Typically constructed of metal, those brackets often have rolled edges to securely hold the flimsy aluminum plates and prevent damage. Often they also have provisions for the plate to be retained by all four screws, and do not impede the mounting of a license plate frame if desired for extra protection or appearance reasons.
I also found that annoying squeak that happens when I slam the trunk lid while adding a license plate frame on the rear plate; the rear bumper fascia (to which the rear license plate is "securely" held by two screws into plastic - I "fixed" that by adding two more holes of my own, although I have to say I still would prefer something like riv-nuts into metal, I realize that that would be way too expensive for you to meet your price point) is loose and vibrates against the actual metal of the bumper assembly, and there is no way to tighten the weird little push-clip fasteners that you used to attach it, so I'll be listening to that squeak until I finally get rid of this car, or in desperation finally remove the fascia and replace all those wacky fasteners with speed clips and sheetmetal screws.
thank you for your consideration.
Nate