Jay Leno’s star power wasn’t enough to persuade a California legislative committee to pass a measure to allow owners of classic cars like him to be exempted from the state’s rigorous smog-check requirements.
Imagine being rich and famous and this is your political cause. What an effing creep.
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.