Illinois...Land of Lincoln

Illinois Passengers 1987-Present
The current Illinois baseplate (Lincoln Head) made it's debut in July of 2001 with 2002 validations. It replaced the 1983 baseplate. Currently, plates are issued in a 123 4567 format, although motorists can (and often do) carry over numbers from previous bases. The 1983 base was first issued in a ABC-123 format, then went to A 12 345 and A 123 456 configurations. There are also many motorists that kept the AB 1234 format from bases past.
2006	2005	2005 Low Number
2004	2004 Low Number	2003 Low Number
2002	2002 (A 000 000 format)	2002 (A 00 000 format)
2002 (ABC-123 format)	2002 on 1983 Base	2001 (ABC-00 format)
2000	1999	1998
1997 (A 00 000 format)	1997 (AAA-000 format)	1992
1989	1987

Images courtesy of Marc Welby, Mike Sells, Dave Hollins, Mark O'Neill (Plate Depot.com), Stephen Jones, Dave Nicholson, Ken Stratton, Ralph Lindgren, Daniel Hediger, Danny Beard, Bruce McCormick, Peter Cohen, Mike Glaubach, Ingo Eiselmayer, D'Arcy Matters, Earl Jensen, Howard Cutler, Andrew Osborne, Michael Weiner, Brian Reback, Ian Slade, Greg Witkin, Gary Fox and Jim Palmer