Hello Everyone:
At the CAT club meeting last week, a very interesting flyer was brought
in from the "ACCC" (Association Of California Car Clubs). I'm not sure
what the date of this flyer is but it is of concern to all of us if it's
recent. I'll paraphrase it to keep things short, so here goes.
"The Defeat Of Senate Bill 285, A Loose/Loose/Catch 22 Fiasco"
"If you're not current on collector car legislation, Senate Bill (SB)
285 was introduced by Sen. Dick Mountjoy to exempt 1973 and older cars
from the new Infra-Red Roadside Sensing Device Smog Inspection" .....the
story goes on to say this bill was not passed by the Senate
Transportation Committee and so can not go to the Senate for a vote.
What this device and plan is, in California, is to read car exhaust
emissions while you're driving your car down the freeway without your
knowledge. If your Sunbeam (or other fine motorcar) fails this drive by
test, you'll get a certified letter from the Bureau Of Automotive Repair
ordering you to take your car into a "test only" or smog referee station
for a BAR-97 (smog testing machine) test. You have only 30 days to come
in. If your car can't be made to pass (and the new test is much more
stringent than the previous test, if I understand it correctly), the
implication in the flyer is you might have to surrender your license
plates!
This is part of the California plan to get old cars off the road,
claiming that's where a significant amount of smog comes from.
The flyer continues: "During the debate on SB 285 (5 minutes) when Sen.
Karnette (who voted against passing this bill) leaned over to her Chief
Of Staff Steve Schnaldt and asked, "What's a carburetor?", I knew we
were in trouble. The fate of the California car hobby was being decided
by four car-hating environmentalists"
"But the worst is yet to come. A BAR smog certificate is only valid for
90 days, so if your car fails Infra-Red testing (and if you do get it to
pass when you take it in), you may have to have it tested 4 times a
year!".
Has anyone on our lists heard about this? Is this for real? That good
bill was passed in our favor last year (exempting pre-1973 cars from
smog testing), but this seems like an attempt by another government
agency to defeat the decision of the state house without putting it to
another vote. I doubt that this new bureacratic nightmare (if for real)
would stand up to a court challenge, since it's contrary to the intent
of last year's legislation, but who knows?
Steve Sage
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