If California’s Governor Gavin Newsom has any aspirations for higher office, he’d better not screw this up. On his desk sits a bill that would allow smog-era cars from the late 1970s and early 1980s to bypass SMOG tests that are often extremely difficult to pass, thus bringing more vintage automotive glory to California’s roads. Unfortunately, after Leno’s Law failed last year, and after decades of enforcing a silly 1975 SMOG exemption instead of a rolling exemption for cars of a certain age, far too many people have had to sell their beloved 1970s/80s automobiles. Including me.
I always thought I’d keep my 1985 Jeep J10 forever. It was the perfect spec of the Jeep pickup I always wanted: It had the inline-six, the four-speed manual, the tall 2.73 gears for road tripping, the eight-foot bed, a stamped tailgate, a gun rack, bench seat, a regular cab, four-wheel drive, manual locking hubs — it was truly a truck’s truck. And with only 85,000 miles on it and a manual transmission that I myself had rebuilt, the thing was the most reliable machine I’d ever owned. The only problem was, I moved to California, and California’s SMOG rules required that I have all the components in place: The EGR, the original carburetor, the vacuum hoses, the secondary air injection pump, a fresh catalytic converter, and on and on.
Over the past few years, there has been hope in the air, and so I held onto my J10, just waiting to see if long-awaited relief for these SMOG-era cars was finally coming. A bill, championed by Jay Leno, seemed like the answer to my problems, as I wrote in my article California’s Smog Rules Are Pushing Me To Sell My Beloved 1985 Jeep J10, And The Improbable ‘Leno’s Law’ Is My Only Hope.
But then this happened: Leno’s Law Is Officially Dead, Which Means Classic Car Owners In California Will Continue to Suffer. I later wrote about how, because there are so many great pre-1976 cars, and because fuel injection became prominent in the mid 1980s, there are still so many amazing options for enthusiasts in California (this was met with readers rightly pointing out that the cars in that 10-year span represent so few vehicles, why even bother making it hard for their owners?). I also went out and bought my truck’s replacement, the Jeep J10’s successor, the Jeep Comanche, configured in exactly the same way — long bed, regular cab, bench seat, stickshift, 4×4, inline-six:
But even if I had a replacement, and even if I still think there are plenty of awesome cars on the road in California, I’m still bummed I had to sell my J10, and I agree with readers that making it hard to SMOG cars in this small span of model-years — cars that aren’t really daily drivers anyway — seems pointless. Which is why I hope Governor Gavin Newsom doesn’t screw this up.
The New York Times breaks the bill down, writing in its piece Jay Leno’s Classic Car Bill Passes in California Legislature:
The bill would exempt some cars made before the model year 1981 from the standard smog checks that determine whether the pollutants they emit are within safe limits. Car collectors say that the current rules in California — which generally require gasoline-powered vehicles from model year 1976 onward to undergo a smog check every two years — are overly restrictive.
“Most of these cars that we’re talking about, they get driven to a car show on a Saturday,” Mr. Leno said. “The car’s parked all day, and then it’s driven home at night.”
The exemption, which applies only to qualifying collector cars, would take effect in January 2028 and be phased in over five years, eventually exempting collector cars made before model year 1986 from smog checks. To qualify, owners must either have collector-car insurance or prove that the vehicle is driven fewer than 1,000 miles per year.
You can read the whole story on The New York Times. It’s a bit slanted, focusing on the fact that these old cars could produce 20x the emissions of a new car, and even though it’s not going to account for a lot of vehicle-miles, it’s still a step in the wrong direction, public-health-wise. I get where they’re coming from, but we as a society have to decide what we think is acceptable from an emissions standpoint, because absolute zero-emissions isn’t going to happen. We have to make compromises, and I, a car enthusiast who daily-drives an electric car, think getting more of these cool cars on the road is worth the small tradeoff, especially if these cars and their repairs can be taxed in a way that offsets some of those emissions.
Governor Gavin Newsom will decide by September 30th whether to sign the bipartisan bill. I hope he does, even though I no longer have a horse in this race, for my beloved Jeep J10 fell victim to the draconian fixed-1975 SMOG exemption. I’m sure many tens of thousands of other 1970s and 1980s cars were either scrapped or sold out of state due to their owners’ inability to get them through SMOG; it’s time for California’s eradication of one of the coolest automotive eras to come to an end.
Top graphic image: David Tracy
Biennial SMOG checks are county-by-county in CA; a fact I learned when I moved to a county that doesn’t require them after living in San Francisco for decades. I’ve never smogged the truck I bought new in ’23.
All title transfers and new titles (brought in from out of state) require a SMOG check in all counties, so David bringing his J10 in from wherevs triggered an inspection. Get it to pass once and register it in the right county and you don’t have to worry ever again (except the next buyer will want it to pass!)
The supremely idiotic CA DMV thing I noticed when I sold my ’91 Econoline and bought a brand new Ranger was that the new truck, despite being the same weight and riding on the same tires, but polluting the atmosphere half as much, was twice as expensive to renew the registration! No one has ever been able to explain to me why a new, clean burning Ford is somehow more of a burden on the DMV than a old, dirty one, and thus requiring higher fees. Is the paperwork they push around heavier?
Charging more to register newer, cleaner burning vehicles dis-incentivises people from getting rid of their old clunkers. No one expects the CA DMV to make sense, though.
It’s actually zipcode by zipcode. Half of San Diego County falls under enhanced, whereas the other more rural half doesn’t.
The Ranger is considered a commercial vehicle in CA and there are additional weight fees associated with that. The Econoline could be considered a passenger vehicle.
Is it going to scrap, or is someone buying 2 old slightly rusted white vehicles?
I support whatever law makes it so I can drive behind an old car and not get choked out if the recirc isn’t on or the windows are down. Choking out blocks of neighborhoods as you drive by is incredibly selfish.
If you can just slap a new cat on the exhaust and it passes a smell test then people can drive whatever old thing they want.
I’m with you.
I’ll add that I don’t want to inhale the fumes of a modern car that the owner decided not to maintain and/or bypass all the emissions either.
Sadly just slapping a cat on in CA is an expensive ordeal in itself, and still may not be enough to pass a tailpipe test.
Older cars can be retrofitted with fuel injection and catalytic converters. The problem is, in California, you’re not allowed to do that. DT’s Jeep needed to have all the original equipment – even if that made it pollute more – and that stuff is unobtainable nowadays.
It really should be, if you pass the sniffer then you pass the test. And if it’s OBDII+ and the CEL if off, you pass. New cars test their own emissions.
You ARE allowed to retrofit newer technology on an older car, but it is heavily restricted and not easy.
My ’85 Ford LTD has an EFI swap and is now BAR certified to be smogged as a ’94 Mustang.
CA smog checks on 2000+ cars is just an OBD scan. It’ll be 1996+ soon to cover all OBD-II.
David Tracy, I assume you still have an out of state driver’s license. You could have just kept the car registered in another state. I doubt cops would have picked on your jeep to pull over when there are tons of R32 GTRs rolling around LA now with Montana plates.
While this is a notable step forward and the ONLY advancement of smog exemptions we’ve seen here in over 20 years, which I applaud, they narrowed the scope of eligible vehicles in the bill so much that this isn’t going to help many people. My 1985 Ford which is on a collector car insurance policy would be eligible, but not until 2031, and as of now the bill ends exemptions at model year 1986 in 2032.
I’m an admin of the Californians For Classic Car Smog Exemptions group which has been working hard with everyone to push this forward, so I’ve closely been following this over the years. Frankly all of the people licking their chops and saying they can’t wait until the law goes into effect so their older car which doesn’t pass smog can be put back on the road are doing everyone who has been pushing the bill a disservice and playing right into the New York Times’ narrative. Their narrative is factually accurate, but I agree there needs to be compromise made somewhere. Sadly I doubt Newsom will sign this version into law.
Hopefully your J10 and that Galaxie 500 are off to less restrictive places to be loved and not the crusher.
It’s a Michigan Rust Free ™ J10. It’s returning to the earth on its own.
It’s a start, but just make it a rolling exemption like they had before. It used to be 30 years rolling exemption.
And of course, I’m sure people register their cars out of state like Michigan 😉
Some people don’t like being reminded that it was a Republican governor who froze the rolling exemption back in 2005.
The auto dealers lobby will fight HARD against it. As soon as it becomes even slightly easier to keep older iron on the road, their new stock is both worth less and harder to move.
And I would part with serious coin for that bright red Comanche. With the straight four and 4WD, I’d…
…well, I wouldn’t get rid of the truck I have. I don’t get married and then start looking forward to the divorce. It’s only been 39 years.
But I’d park the Comanche right next to it!
I really doubt dealer lobbies would be fighting anything that only impacts 40+ year old cars and even then only those driven very few miles.
I think you’re right. Almost nobody would cross-shop anything on a dealers lot against something 40+years old that can only be driven 1000 miles a year.