Every airfield that I have worked at requires pilots to report aircraft type on first contact with radar and when obtaining departure clearance, it usually says to do that on the ATIS
Who else asks for it? Heathrow is the only place I've been to that expects the info on first call - most other airports that I go to know before I arrive what aircraft I am in as it is written on the FPL.
I can imagine that the info might occasionally have been wrong when operators used RPLs - but even so was it ever so unreliable that this caused major problems?