Classic cars will still need a smog test in California after lawmakers reject Jay Leno bill

What the hell is going on in this thread? Is this the "fuck cars unless it's a pretty old car" community?

In Leno's defense, smog checks for older cars can be absolute nonsense in CA.

I have an older car caught up in that nonsense. The header pipes cracked and replacement parts didn't exist so I had a shop build some. They did amazing work and function perfectly; it's just pipe about a foot long.

Anyway, the smog test shop sees that and fails visual inspection. That super sucks. There are no CARB exempt headers, and OEM is't available. I spent $$$ to put the old, leaking pipes back on, and send it back to the shop. Visual passes, smog passes. Next stop to the mechanic to swap headers back again.

At the moment there is a lot more to smog testing an older car than a tube up the tailpipe and actual emission data which is the whole point of having this program in the first place.

Leno likes cars, keeps his in great condition, and may simply need replacement parts manufactured that no longer exist.

Edit: that said, I hoped the Leno law would fail. I looked up registration for my older car as a "classic". Yikes that's pricy! And has all kinds of strings attached like special registration and have to be garaged. This would be devastating to the classic car community.

After reading your edit I looked at the bill summary and yea, I don't care that it got killed. It only seems to help large collectors, not the person with one or two cars.
It would be nice if the 1975 smog exemption rule could roll each year.
Or unpopular opinion: Fuck classic smogmobiles. If you want to go show it off put it on a trailer pulled by an EV. Why create pollution for fun?
- Virtually every kind of "fun" creates pollution. Even going for a run you pollute. What about doing a road trip in a modern car is "better" than putting around town in an old one when both activities pollute a similar amount?
  The real questions worth asking are:
  Are these classic cars a threat to public health? (Presumably no, their numbers are small and ever dwindling)
  Should the law apply to all cars and when/how is it fair to make a carve out? (The answer is subjective and political and I have a feeling this is the one that actually struck a nerve with you).
  Also worth noting is that EVs are hardly a panacea. Modern ICEs are "good enough" that a lot of the immediate health concerns now come from particulates from brake and tire dust, noise pollution (which EVs contribute to nearly as much as ICEs at speed), sedentarism, accidents, and hostile urban design. The real fight is in getting most passenger cars eliminated from cities altogether and rehabilitating suburbs to be livable without car dependency, not in bickering about powertrains.
- Better yet convert it to an EV.

Nothing against strict smog regulations. But it's wildly hypocritical that the government can be all hardass about it yet can't even manage to finish building one fucking train line.

But you see some tech facist said that a underground tunnels for cars is the better more futuristic way to go
- And he's not wrong.
  Oh wait. Yes he is. How is ANYBODY listening to this guy?
  Oh right. Money.
The government also doesn't use any emissions restrictions on their own military vehicles and many other government vehicles. They're more reliable without it.

This word, "creep", seems to have lost all meaning. What's creepy, specifically, about trying to run his old cars? If America has anything resembling a culture, it's cars.

The world has gone buckwild, political division is being supported like sports teams, there's no rational thought, it's us vs them and everything that someone does that didn't align with the users view point is just abused with nonsensical insults.

CA needs exemptions. These vehicles are few and far between, and getting even more rare every single year.

The emissions from these handfuls of cars is negligible in comparison to what's stuck in traffic on the 101.

CARB in California is a joke, it requires so many parts that literally are just a piece of bent pipe to be submitted for approval to be certified. Parts which have nothing to do with emissions.

I had a car caught up in this in Colorado and had to get rid of it. Specifically, I had to remove a bunch of obsolete air pump equipment and update the fueling system with a much more modern electronically controlled system. The car was measurably better than it's original standards but failed the visual check because it was missing the old, polluting, inefficient and unavailable parts.

If the car still meets the emissions of it's day, put a mileage limit on it and let it go. If there are too many on the road then implement a nontransferrable lottery system to get classic plates for them. The amount of pollution these few tens of thousands of vehicles put out being used a couple of times a month is a drop in the bucket compared to everything else that continues to get a pass.

Why not start banning camp fires? What about old boats? Stationary power units? These all seem to get a pass and probably dwarf the emissions of classic cars being used occasionally.

Storing cars is also devastating for the environment and society. We have as much land and resources devoted to housing cars as we do to housing people. I've seen so many houses that have garages as big as their house + a paved driveway + each city needs 3 publicly funded parking spots per car.
We need less cars. There simply isn't a future were we beat climate change without getting the majority of people to take trains, buses, and bikes
- I don't disagree that public transport, bikeable cities and mixed use development is the only way we beat climate change. However, people using space to store a classic car is not different than dedicating space to any other hobby. Not everything needs to be purely utilitarianism.
- Leaving a car in a garage is absolutely not environmentally devastating. That's got to be one of the silliest things I've read on here in a while.

This is sad - most of these enthusiast vehicles are well cared for and driven less than 1-2k miles a year. The people who were asking for this were looking for a legal path to register their vehicles.

They'll still be registered, just in Montana under an LLC because they don't have a better option.

A handful of people, who spend a lot of time keeping old cars running and looking good, are not the problem. Not even close. The overall pollution from a parade of old cars is negligible compared to everyone going back and forth to work every day.

Even so, why should they get a pass?

The problem here is that people will just register those cars in other states. So that means you still get the same smog issues without the registration revenues.

Wish they'd do a better job policing modern cars blowing smoke constantly from abuse that somehow pass smog checks. Stop relying solely on computer monitoring and let techs do a real inspection again.

Leno is a narcissistic asshole trying to push a law that only benefits rich collectors like himself, in that respect I'm glad it failed.

Most of the people running these cars aren't particularly rich. They're older, often retired, and generally have enough financial stability to have a garage and buy an old beater to fix up with cash in hand, but they're far from rich. It's not a cheap hobby by any means, but except for the rarest types of cars, we're talking thousands, not millions. The elbow grease is more expensive than what you buy directly.
For an example of a cheap build, look up "Look mum no computer" on YouTube and look for the "Big Bogey" project where he restores an old Mini that's more rust than car.

He could just move to Mississippi or one of the other handful of states that don't have any vehicle inspections. Hell, we have Cruisin' The Coast coming up soon, I bet people would love to see Leno's rides.

Not like most of his classic vehicles are meant as daily drivers anyways.

Yes, a billionaire could move to a shithole state, but why would they?
- Because people can do damn near whatever the fuck they want with their classic vehicles here, and Jay Leno has many classic vehicles.
He could also move just his cars. Flying from LA to Reno can't take more than a couple hours.

The problem is that California has a lot of these cars, and they are daily driven. The solution, which will be expensive, is to run the cars on ethanol.

At least in MN the way it works is that vehicles over a certain age can be registered as collectors vehicles and get special lifetime collectors plates. If you register a vehicle as a collectors vehicle then it doesn't need any updated emissions or safety equipment. But at the same time it is illegal to use a collectors vehicle for daily driving. You are only permitted to drive it to/from shows/events and to take it on occasional pleasure drives. If you get caught making a grocery run with one then you get fined, the plates impounded, and you could even face jail time.
This seems to work out pretty well here. It's pretty uncommon to see these vehicles on the road outside of big events. And it doesn't require owners to modify their classic vehicles when many pride themselves on keeping these vehicles as stock as possible.
Edit: Also ethanol isca very bad idea for these vehicles. Firstly the seals and hoses on these vehicles are not designed for it so it destroys them, as someone else aluded to. But more importantly, these vehicles aren't being driven regularly and ethanol is not stable to leave in the vehicles. When it ages ethanol breaks down into a varnish that covers everything and clogs the hell out of things like carburators. That is the reason that you want to use nonoxygenated gas (no ethanol added) on vehicles that aren't driven frequently. Ethanol is the main thing that makes gas go bad. If you don't have ethanol in there then the shelf life is extended dramatically. If you ran these vehicles on ethanol you would basically be requiring people to drain and dry every fuel carrying component whenever they wanted to store it (which should be often if you don't want them daily driving them).
- My state just restricts their use during January. You also cannot use the vehicle for any type of commercial purpose. You must also have at least one vehicle that isn't register as a collector.
- In Minnesota, we don't have smog checks or inspections. Furthermore, the registration tax for any vehicle 10 years or older is a fixed $30 no matter what the vehicle is actually worth. So if you have a old collector car, getting collector plates for it saves you like $25 a year versus just getting normal plates for it. So it's not uncommon at all to see collector cars running around with standard MN plates, since the added cost is minimal and you don't have to deal with the restrictions.
Doesn’t that also wear the engine out more quickly?
- Engines don't necessarily wear faster, but there are modifications such as rubber seals, more robust fuel lines, and new air/fuel mapping to accommodate running ethenol vs gas.

Some old guy wanting to drive old cars deserves a "What an effing creep"? That's just sad :(

Maybe creep is the wrong word (though I wouldn't be surprised if he was also that) but essentially saying "I should be allowed to pollute because my toys that no one else can afford are pretty" is certainly jackass-adjacent.

I‘m really happy to hear that this bill failed. Those old cars smell awful. Keeping them on the road is unnecessary.

Shhhh, nobody correct them 😉

Lol rich people are something else. They have the means to reduce their carbon footprint to well below zero. But what do they do with all that money? Make smog. T Swift needs to do more than just carbon offsets. Jay Leno needs to grow up and either put those cars in a Museum) or junk them. Wealthy people's personal choices can actually impact climate change.

Jay Leno has always sucked, and will continue to suck.