alt Hacker NewsAbsolutely they can. Vehicle panel colors, wheel rims, roofrack, tow hitch, bumper stickers, damage all factor into their vehicle fingerprinting.
And once they've got a real license plate for the vehicle, all the historical information for that vehicle fingerprint's activities are now linked.
I routinely add/remove many of those things so I'm not sure how reliable they are.
Like I alternate between hitch/no hitch/bike rack, add/remove roof rack (it hurts mileage and is easy to swap), swap between my summer and winter rims+tires, and rotating through a set of magnetic bumper stickers would be trivial.