DCist couldn’t help noticing a number of strikingly different looking diplomatic license plates popping up on some vehicles around Washington over the past couple of weeks. From far away, the color scheme and design of the plates couldn’t be easily identified as having been been issued by the U.S. Department of State, and we wondered whether they belonged to another sovereign nation, like maybe there was some kind of Canadian diplomatic conference being held in Washington.

As it turns out, the plates are just a brand new design that began being issued by our own government in the middle of 2007. We found this press release from back in August announcing the new design, which was created in line with the standard practice in motor vehicle departments to change plate design periodically, and to distinguish the State Department’s plates from other jurisdictions’ plates. Compare and contrast the old, familiar design below, which had been in place for 23 years, with the new one posted above. Think it’s an improvement?

Calls to the State Department’s Office of Foreign Missions went unreturned, but we’ve only noticed the new plates, which began being phased in last year and will continue to replace the old plates through 2008, since the new year, so perhaps a lot of diplomatic missions have vehicles with registrations that expired at the end of 2007.

Other exciting facts gleaned from this semi-old press release: There are approximately 11,619 OFM diplomatic vehicles in use nationwide, with 6,277 in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, 2,596 in New York City, and 769 in Los Angeles; and it turns out Ambassador Roble Olhaye of Djibouti is the current Dean of the State Department Diplomatic Corps. Who knew?