This may be old news to some or most, so please don't rip me too hard if so. But, anyway, I was reading a mag my wife bought me that I wouldn't normally get for myself, but she got it for me so I read it. It was Classic Trucks or something like that, I don't recall right this second. I was skimming through it and I came across an article about a proposed CA smog law that was narrowly defeated recently that would have required all 15+ year old vehicles to be smogged once a year and some of the fees from the program used towards buying back as many cars as possible and crushing them. I had heard that CA was trying to ramp up the buy back program, but the whole smog thing was news me and a bit of a shocker since the goal of the program was obviously to make it pretty difficult to operate and older vehicle in CA. I am not sure what the smog requirements would have been for really old cars prior to the 60's before smog stuff was even an issue. Maybe they would have had to just make some up hoping not many would pass. Or, maybe they would have only gone back to all cars that had ever been smogged and make them required to be smogged again and the ones pre-smog get grandfathered or something. The law didn't pass this time around because it was apparently determined that there weren't enough older cars creating enough pollution to make it worth the effort - my thinking exactly and I am a pretty hardcore Prius driving pro-environment type. My guess is that this will just come up again and may pass in some form in the near future and may put a pretty big damper on driving older cars and trucks in CA. Hopefully just a bit of doomsday thinking. Anybody have any better insight into this proposed law and any suggestion on groups that might be doing something to stop it that I might be able to lend my support. I am usually not to directly active with proposed law stuff, but this one kind of irritates me the wrong way and maybe enough to do something.
If I'm not mistaken, SEMA is a group that helps on issues such as this. Check into them and see what they can do to help. http://www.semasan.com/main/main.aspx?ID=/content/SEMASANcom/HomePage http://www.sema.org/Main/StartPage.aspx
i think what it meant was that the law on the books was all cars older than 15 were smog exempt. when the law went on the books it made sense. however come y2k a 1985 honda ccvc was smog exempt. they decided to change the law to cars have to pass the smog limits set for the car at YOM. a good law as long as they didn't f it all up in legislature.
Let's see what would be worse for the environment......throwing away two tons of metal and plastic so the owner has to buy two more tons of metal and plastic or just let the car puff a few more gases than the rest....hmmm.......OH! I know maybe let the classic cars do there thing because they aren't driven as often as regular cars and are a piece of history and have the more modern cars get I dunno maybe a tune up . I love retarded tree huggers they all take their old cars and throw them into giant heaps of garbage and then run out and by the new "it" car that gets ten miles more to the gallon and then say they are helping the environment.
It has less to do with the environment, and more to do with collecting fees. The state makes nothing but basic registration from an old car. They get sales tax on all those new $15-$80,000 cars that are sold. If they "force"you to get a new car, they win. The new cars get a little more if any MPG than cars made 20 years ago. They are just smaller and lighter. That means you have a better chance of getting wiped out in one.
I've read about this before and what I believe the deal is is that currently 1975 model year and older are exempt from bi-annual smog testing. Any car less that 5 years old is also exempt from testing. What they want to do is require cars 15 years old or older to be tested annually, but 1975 and older would still be exempt from testing. So, if the law were currently in place, cars from 1976 to 1992 would be tested annually and 1993 to 2002 bi-annually. ....and no, I don't like it either. Kurt O.
I'm glad I live in nebraska, so I don't have to worry much at all about this kind of stuff. My little Cutlass is safe in nebraska, for now.
the thing about calif is, that the left wing majority in govn couldn't care less about the cost to implement a stupid law. they do it all the time with anti 2nd amendment pro criminal gun laws like they just passed. this is the thinking that put the state in the mess it was in not to long ago.
The new law would have cars 1991 and older (to the 1976 model year) smogged every year. Street Rodder mag addressed this too and it didn't pass this year (with big help from SEMA) but will surely come up again next year. I had a previous post addressing smog on cars to 75 that are 'exempt'. After a show in Solvang Ca, the CHP set up a check point and pulled over cars to check the smog equipment. A co worker has a 68 big block Camaro. The CHP had him open the hood and challenged him as to where his smog pump was. He had to convince him that big block Camaros didn't have pumps in 68, otherwise he would have recieved a citation. Got a blower sticking out of the hood of a Camaro, you could be cited if the original smog equipment is missing. Yes, there are ways to get revenue from those older cars - it's called fines. Who knows where this mentality comes from??
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