Help prevent Californians from losing vital parts of their automotive history. More an more, vintage automobiles are scraped as they cannot comply with emission testing requirements which were not in effect when the cars were designed.

You can help stop this trend by signing the petition and asking Senator Glazer to reinstate the rolling smog exemption for vintage automobiles and exempting pre-1997 from the BAR-97 “dynamometer” testing. (However, non-exempt pre-1997 cars would still need to pass the old “tailpipe sniffer” test until they “aged out”.)

There is no doubt that automobiles are a major part of our county’s heritage. Henry Ford’s introduction of the Model T brought the car to the common citizen and produced a economic and recreation boom. From the Model T forwards, the various makes and models of cars produced reflect our ingenuity, our cultural style, and the uniqueness of the individual (I’m thinking of you Pontiac Aztek.)

This is a heritage which needs preservation by maintaining working examples of vintage cars. Any gear head will tell you that to really understand the “why” of a vehicle, it must be driven. And to drive the vehicle, it must be registered, and to register you need a smog test.

Originally California’s emissions testing did not present much of a problem for vintage cars, thanks to a rolling 30 year exemption. (Meaning that a 1978 vehicle would be exempt from smog testing after 2008.) This allowed car enthusiasts to keep our automotive heritage alive despite a lack of replacement smog parts.

However, two things changed resulting in a destruction of our automotive heritage.

First, California changed the smog test itself in 1997. Unlike the old “tail pipe sniffer test” the new, BAR-97, test requires testing done on a dynamometer (a treadmill for cars). The problem? Cars built before the institution of the test were not designed to pass the test. The result? More an more vintage cars scraped for failure to pass a test not in effect when they were built.

Next, in 2004 California removed the rolling 30 year exemption, requiring all cars model year 1976 or newer to pass the dynamometer test for which they were not designed. Previously a classic car owner with smog problems need only store the car until the 30 year exemption became effective. Now, owners are forced to scrap their cars as replacement smog parts become unavailable.

Now lets be realistic, vehicles 30 years or older are not a major contributor to smog. Most people owning pre-1986 (30 years old as of 2016) own the cars for nostalgic reasons and use them for occasional use, not daily driving. The risk of a mechanical failure, which at the least leads to a costly repair or at worse requires vehicle retirement due to lack of replacement parts, makes drivers self-regulate to a minimal use.

Given the importance of our collective automotive heritage, and the lack of any significant smog impact of collector cars, I urge you to sign this petition to request that Senator Steve Glazer push for legislation reenacting the rolling 30 year smog exemption and exempting all pre-1997 vehicles form the BAR-97 dynamometer test (but continue to require non-exempt cars to pass the “tailpipe” test for which they were designed.)