All this talk about pollution brings a memory...in 1969 one humid hot
day when we lived in Livermore, we decided to take our Lotus 7A to a
local wine tasting and energy efficient car exhibit held at one of the
wineries in town.
We drove in, and the person at the gate asked if this car was for
exhibit.
"What does it take?"
"Less than 1000cc engine will do."
So we parked our 948cc Sprite powered 7A alongside the steam and
electric cars.
"Wow! The 'Prisoner' car," was heard quite often. Not exactly.
All goes to point out you can have fun and still be politically
correct. :)
--Pat Kelly
"Allendorfer, Mike" wrote:
>
> I will stipulate that your '67 Lotus Elite is a very nice car and quite
> valuable. I will further stipulate that it is driven so seldom that the
> emissions are inconsequential. Frankly, I'd love to have one of several '60s
> cars that were neat and powerful. I aso bet that it would have lower
> tailpipe emissions than some more modern but poorer maintained cars. The
> car I was refering to is the 62 Caddy or Galaxie 500 w/ 3 bald tires, one
> tail light, one head light and 3 underpaid, barely able to keep a roof over
> their heads, day laborers, who have to add a quart of oil w/ every fill-up
> and cannot afford to fix their car. This car will pollute more than 500
> other cars on the freeway. The $500 that the "state" will give this person
> will only buy him a new set of problems to get used to. BTW, that $500
> doesn't really come from the state. It's the refineries (Unocal 76 for one)
> and power producers looking to buy pollution credits, so they can continue
> to pollute w/ impunity. (gee, we took 1000lbs/day of pollution off the
> road) Also, a Ford engineer (I'm sorry, I can't point you to the reference
> right now) said that a 66 Galaxie just sitting in the garage expels more
> hydrocarbons as uncaptured gas tank fumes than a modern car driving hundreds
> of miles. I will point you to C&D, Feb 2001, Patrick Bedard's column for
> reference on some of this.
> http://caranddriver.com/xp/Caranddriver/columns/2001/February/200102_columns
> _bedard.xml
>
> I know that the state has a toll free number to report smoking cars. How
> many times have you called it? The point is that electric cars are a very
> poor solution to pollution and modern cars are very efficient at reducing
> pollution and giving good performance w/o the help of wrong-headed politicos
> mussing the waters w/ reformulated gas, ethanol, electric cars and other
> non-solutions.
> Mike
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Rich Urschel <OSP13@attglobal.net>
> To: Allendorfer, Mike <mwa96imp@regionofdoom.com>; <ba-autox@autox.team.net>
> Sent: Monday, July 30, 2001 7:40 PM
> Subject: Dirt bagging smokers and spewers
>
> > First "Allendorfer, Mike" tells us:
> > > Guess why our younger generation is turned off to politics.
> >
> > And now he shares these caustic and misinformed words:
> > >...Car & Driver speculated that the State of Calif. could chase down
> every
> > dirt-bag
> > > driving a 60s era junker spewing smoke and smog and give them the pink
> > slip
> > > and keys to a new Cadillac and come out ahead of the millions that they
> > are
> > > spending on the electric car subsidies
> >
> > The State of California made 25 year old cars exempt from smog inspections
> > because there aren't enough of them being driven enough miles to be making
> > more than a collectively trivial contribution to air pollution. In fact
> the
> > only real
> > debate was whether the State should give up the fees from the smog
> > certificates,
> > which they did. It is also, by the way, illegal to drive a smoking car on
> > the
> > streets, and there is a number to call to report one. You could look it
> up.
> >
> > Respectfully,
> > Your fellow dirt bag who would immediately hand the keys of a free
> Cadillac
> > to an auto
> > broker, and who thinks the State of California should stop wasting tax
> payer
> > money
> > by repeatedly offering to buy my 1967 Lotus Elan for $15,700.00 less than
> > it's
> > fair market value.
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