His name is Billy, and his business, “Pasadena Motor Vehicle Registration & Transfer Service,” shares a nondescript building with his small used-car dealership off of Pasadena’s busy Foothill Boulevard. A few months ago I walked in with two huge problems: I had a car with zero paperwork, and I had another car that the world didn’t know existed.
One of the biggest concerns I had with my WWII Jeep project — a project that required me to buy hundreds of parts and, in my driveway, assemble them all into a functional car — was registration. It would be one thing if I managed to somehow get the thing built in time, but how was I going to get it on the road legally? The world didn’t know it existed!
Then there was my reference Jeep. This was a vehicle I bought from a random guy out in the desert. It came with zero paperwork, and if I’m honest, I didn’t even see a VIN plate.
When I got the Jeep home, I did a bit of digging and I found a part of a VIN plate that had been partially destroyed by a welder:
I cut off the 1/4″ steel plate that had been welded to the frame to bolster the front bumper, and managed to identify six digits. But that’s all I had.
So back in November, four months before my Moab Easter Jeep Safari deadline, I stopped by Pasadena Motor Vehicle Registration & Transfer Service in hopes that somehow, some way I could figure something out.
Billy greeted me and told me that, so long as I had a VIN, he’d take it from there. Did I have the full VIN? Technically, that data plate would have the letters “MB” ahead of the numbers, but many Willys MB owners don’t use the “MB” as part of the VIN they use on their title, so the six numbers, I figured, should suffice.
And indeed, they did. $400 and two weeks after my visit, Billy had a shiny new title at my doorstep.
Part of me thought that, worst case, if I could register the reference vehicle then I could somehow find a way to justify allowing my homemade Jeep to take that vehicle’s identity and become the reference Jeep. This led to many ethical and philosophical questions. How many parts of the reference Jeep does my new Jeep have to have before I can justify using the VIN?
This became a Ship of Theseus situation, though more importantly, it didn’t sit right with me. If the concept of building this new WWII Jeep was that I was building a new WWII Jeep, then it cannot have the same VIN as an old WWII Jeep. Even if I could easily justify doing it as so many hotrodders do when they turn a Ford Model A into something not even remotely resembling a Model A, I just couldn’t. I was building a new Jeep, and a new Jeep is not an old Jeep.
“Just bring in the receipts,” Billy told me.
“Huh? That’s it?” I replied. “Yes, fill out this form and then bring me the receipts,” he answered, handing me a piece of paper.
So I filled out a Statement of Construction form (this is part of California’s “Specialty Constructed Vehicle” application process) which required me to explain what the build was and where I got all the parts:
And I submitted the receipts for the major components (this was easy, since I could just print them from eBay):
Fast forward a few weeks and five Benjamins in Billy’s hand and BOOM, my problem was solved. I had temp tags for March and April, the two months over which my Jeep road trip was expected to take place:
This doesn’t mean my Jeep is registered; it’s not. After my trip to Moab, I had to drive to a California Highway Patrol office to have a VIN assigned:
I still have to install brake lights, a license plate light, and turn signals, plus I have to figure out how to get this Jeep to stop from 25 mph in 20 feet.
Once I pass the brake and light test, then hopefully this Jeep will be legally registered. Hopefully. There’s question over whether this thing needs to be smogged. The CHP said the answer is “no,” but all it takes is one person at the Department of Motor Vehicles to tell me it’s technically a new motor and therefore has to meet 2026 regs, and then I’ll be up the creek. But I’m hopeful.
In any case, this Registration Wizard (as I like to call him) in Pasadena was a huge help, and his services represented the best $900 I ever spent. I got to sell the reference Jeep for $4500 thanks to it having a clean title, and I got to do take the most epic road trip of my life without worrying about catching the attention of police.
Top Image: Billy Billotti
Looks like you are going through the sb100 route with the Jeep?
Oh another ca dmv fact, if you ever buy a car that has past due dmv fees, they look back 7 years. If a car has let’s say 15yrs of past due fees, you’ll only pay late fees for 7 years. That was a pleasant surprise for me.
That’s annoying. I intentionally skip years on my motorcycle registration since I don’t do as much touring these days and having to pay registration fees for something that sat in a garage for 2 years feels like grade A bullshit.
There’s a Planned Non-Op option that is significantly cheaper if you want to not use it.
That’s good to hear. It’s annoying in Washington because you have to basically let it lapse for 2 years. If you renew shortly after you let it lapse for a year they make you pay for that year you missed, but if you wait longer, it resets and you don’t have to pay for the year you didn’t use. It’s weird.
I get annoyed every year that my state increases the registration renewal rate. Now $53 for What exactly? I just found out today, If you’re retired, collecting SS, lowish declarable income, you qualify for the senior discount after submitting a form, and it will be $10 !! Just a heads up to fellow geezers to check! Also for geezer care givers in some situations. Only one per geezer. Tip your barkeep, be kind, that’s it, Go Home.
I use my AAA and AARP cards.
Good to know and bookmarked.
Glad it worked out on the up and up. It was expensive but looks like you found the proper guide. Good on you for not resorting to the Montana LLC.
Yeah, I saw a Lambo in my neighborhood with graphics for a local business on it with Montana plates the other day and I wished them many expensive mechanical catastrophes for being dickheads.
I thought Cali was cracking down on the ‘Montana Clause’ as I once heard it describe, registering out of state to skip taxes? Or did they already give up once all the wealthy owner’s tax lawyers got involved?
Be careful when answering the questions of registration wizards…
How many coconuts could your Jeep carry? What’s the average speed of an unladen Jeep?
What do you mean? A Ford GPW or a Willys MB?
You might yourself ejected into the abyss…
Or thrown into the river to see if it floats!
“What’s your favorite car color?”
South Carolina is real dumb sometimes, but reading about people having to jump through hoops like this makes me real glad I’m not in California.
Why? Right here before your eyes describes the successful process. There are laws and requirements on the books, just follow them and you’ll be ok.
I didn’t have to pay somebody $900 to navigate those laws and requirements. After I paid my car off, $55 and 10 minutes of my time to fill out a form got me my title.
Pretty sure if David had more time he could have figured it out on his own. In my recent experience the CA DMV is surprisingly helpful.
Also I didn’t see who paid for this. Probably eBay or Autopian. At worst it’s a tax write off. So I don’t think cost was as big a factor as it would have been straight out of pocket.
The title to a car you built in your yard? Or one with no title?
Fair point, but guess what? The fee’s the same, and the paperwork is almost exactly same for antiques and kit cars. $55 and a couple forms, and that’s that.
There are a whole lot of things that make me real glad I’m not in California. It falling into the ocean is one.
Is CA sinking too? I thought that was an east coast problem…
It will be once the Counterweight State cracks off at the fault line.
The Central Valley is. They pump a gallon of water out of the ground for every single almond. There are a lot of almonds (and pistachios and olives etc) being produced every year there. Some places have sunk as much as 9 meters/30 feet.
Obligatory music reference: My Old School by Steely Dan
I never visited a single DMV when in California, save for getting my motorcycle endorsement. You can do all the things at AAA there. I really miss that.
Up here in Ontario, Canada, there’s one REALLY annoying quirk.
ANY vehicle 20 years or older *requires* an appraisal to be registered. A bill of sale will not suffice.
If the appraisal comes back less than you paid? They’ll just charge you off the bill of sale. After making me pay for the appraisal they end up not using.
Probably an ill-conceived attempt to eliminate the “bought it for $250” claim on bills of sale.
Counterpoint:
Once a vehicle is 20 years old, stop re-collecting tax off the sale of it and just charge the registration fees.
Like holy hell, some vehicles the ministry gets the value of the entire car in taxes on it if it passes enough owners.
That’s why I said it’s an “ill-conceived attempt”. Typical thinking to focus more on recovering a perceived loss of income without considering how much it costs to recover that income.
I’ve compared it to taking a chainsaw to your couch to recover $2.37 in change; yeah you got the money back, but now you need to buy a new couch at a MUCH greater cost…
“Stepping over dollars to pick up dimes” is the term I like to use at my work.
You may recall a certain ketamine-addled CEO who made headlines by taking a proverbial chainsaw to the US Government? That’s when I made up a new term for this behavior…
I still don’t know how you received temp tags without an inspection? Do they not even check for headlights in California?
Now take it to Germany and try to register! 😀
Surprisingly the only test required in CA is a smog test. And if the car is 1975 or older they don’t even require that. I am betting that this is going to be a problem for David.
They do the same thing David described if you have to switch to a salvage title. I had my car repaired after State Farm totaled it. They notified the state who cancelled the registration. When reregistering it they gave me a temp registration subject to passing a lamps and brakes test. I had two months to get the test done and then got my full registration. I assume they do that because you need to be able to drive it to the repair shop that is licensed to do a lamps and brakes test and to the smog test shop and the DMV to have a VIN verification done.
In CA the temp tags are meant so you can drive your car to get it up to date and inspected.
One of the things that kind of ticks me off about my state is that a temp tag can only be issued through a car dealer, so if you buy private party, you have no choice but to drive the car with no plate to the state inspection station. They have a form you can print out and fill out yourself to show a cop who pulls you over, but its really unofficial and homemade looking, some DOT employee just did it in Word. And, if you fail inspection, the best the DMV can do is print out a form that lets you drive the car for 15 days for tasks necessary for repairs and reinspection, but, again, nothing is actually displayed on the car, you just show the paper if you get pulled over.
I think the last time a jeep of that vintage was in Germany, they didn’t worry about registration… 😉
Refresh my WWII history, wasn’t bureaucracy one of the few defenses the Germans didn’t employ?
While no longer looking to build my own car, I still find all of this interesting. If this is a home-built with assigned VIN, how does it end up smog exempt? Do they consider it a replica subject to the year(s) of the original’s production? If it were considered a replica under LVMVMA, AFAIK, it would have to meet modern emissions. For all the grief I read about CA, this seems surprisingly lenient.
A lot of the grief about California’s a deliberate smear campaign.
I know, but it’s not Fox News BS to say they’re very strict when it comes to car emissions enforcement. MA is not as tough as CA and I’m not sure how I’d be able to register a newly built old vehicle without having to pass emissions or committing fraud using an old vehicle’s VIN.
Mass, like a lot of northern states that opted-into the California emissions standards when the Feds started to allow them to in the late ’90s, is a road salt state so they never signed up for pre-OBDII sniff testing since those cars would age out of the fleet in due time.
My point is the opposite. If I built a Jeep like this, I don’t know how I would legally get it registered without an engine that passes emission standards that were in place at the time of manufacture, so I’d need to pass 2026 standards. Emissions have to match or exceed the year of chassis or engine, whichever is newer. I could swap an old spec engine into a matching-standards old chassis, but his new chassis would require meeting 2026 standards. Only way I can think of that I’d be able to do what he did would be to use the VIN of a parts Jeep, then it’s legally that other Jeep, but that’s fraud. Then, because I no longer know shady people, I’d probably have to chop the parts vehicle into small pieces for scrap disposal as a largely complete vehicle is difficult to get rid of without a title and using that title for disposal of the parts vehicle means you couldn’t register the new vehicle using its VIN as it would come up in the system as destroyed.
It’s actually pretty easy for cases like this, but I see a lot of hand-wringing here about it. This vehicle materially appears in all aspects to be a copy or tribute of an already known and existing vehicle. It will not be treated like a 2026 vehicle, but rather the intended and identifiable “reference” vehicle.
It’ll be treated like the OG Jeep as far as emissions goes.
In some states you can apparently register anything, but not in MA and, if that’s the case in CA, that’s surprising. It doesn’t matter if it’s a replica or not—if it’s a home-built, it needs to pass emissions matching year of manufacture per date of VIN assignment. I can build a Cobra kit or Cobra scratch replica or a Cerberus (car I designed that doesn’t resemble any particular car) and the emission requirement is the same. Federally, as a manufacturer, there are exemptions for crash testing and nonsense equipment if the vehicle is a replica (it doesn’t have to be that exact, a resemblance is fine, though who’s judging a design of loose resemblance, IDK, and it might be luck of the draw) and production volume is capped at 325 units per year. So, once registered with the NHTSA for the low volume manufacturer exemption, FFR could build, say, 100 turnkey Cobras, 100 turnkey Daytona coupes, and 125 turnkey ’33 Ford hotrods per year and just need to meet basic equipment requirements (lights and such), but they still have to pass emissions for year of manufacture (using an engine from a production car that has passed EPA—they don’t have to redo certification, but OEM emissions equipment has to be intact and functioning). That doesn’t matter here, though, as Tracy is getting an assigned VIN, which is what they give home-built cars.
More than a lot. Those certain people will jump on anything to disparage the place. It were that bad, 1 in 8 Americans would not live there.
I live here and they are absolutely right. It’s a hellscape. Please no one else move here. In fact, don’t even visit.
California is best when flown over.
Preferably on the way out of
Gileadthe USCalifornia is a long way to get to Canada.
Spent a week at a Skip Barber class, Laguna Seca 25 or so years ago. Found a cheap hotel in Monterey and had an absolute blast. Had a friend in grad school at UC Berkelly at the time, spent 2 days in San Fran. Great place to visit, no desire to actually live there. Rented a new edge Mustang convertible for the trip.
Other than being incredibly expensive it’s an awesome place to live.
Thus the reason it’s expensive…
No it’s all true! Don’t move here! We’re far too crowded already and all new immigrants are just sacrificed to the roaming gangs of undocumented criminal zombie cannibals.
California DMV gets a lot of grief, but with patience and a completed “statement of facts” form, it’s worked out for me and registering old cars.
And if one needs a laugh, there’s the great scene from Patty and Selma on the Simpsons.
I’ve been waiting for this article. I had totally expected the process was going to be absolutely bonkers and involve legal jiujitsu across different time zones. Surprising anticlimactic but I’m glad of that for you.
You hire someone to do the legal jiujitsu.
I kinda wonder how much of that is paying the money, to hire the guy, who has the relationship, to get the paperwork across the line. Kinda like if you hire a lawyer you can get a moving violation turned into some BS charge of “defective equipment” with no points. Just takes money to grease the skids.
There was a lot of similar discussion when the Chinese reproductions of AE86’s and 240Z’s first started getting talked about. A lot of people were adamant that registering either would be impossible without a donor VIN.
Articles like this give me hope in my “I have several tens of thousands of dollars to waste on a project” dreams. My hopes for either would be such a bastardized build that I wouldn’t want to “waste” a survivor chassis, I just want the shape.
Sheesh. Just about as sketch as his wedding licence to “not her real name.”
Don’t forget the kid’s $5 birth certificate as “not his real name”.
My parents “forgot” to fill in my name on my birth certificate. I had to get it amended when I applied for a passport when I was 16.
There are still a few variations on my name on various official documents. Astonishingly Social Security and the IRS seem to insist on two different names.
Man, I imagine that’d be a headache, but then I remembered I found out I was adopted as an infant after I already had a passport with zero issues getting it, and my name was changed after the adoption. Lucky me!
I got to pick my own name, and I was a Junior, so I said to just go with that. Turns out my father wasn’t going by his first name, so legally my name is one I have never used even though I picked it out myself. And for some reason officials hate middle names.
I periodically thought to have my name legally changed to H Hugh Crawford, but as has been pointed out, that is more or less a sneeze.
Getting a recitation of Who’s On First got old a half century ago, I’m not up to Achoo Crawford as a new choice.
Did you say “Abe Lincoln”?
When it comes to shenanigans to get a car registered, to me intent matters more than the technical legalities. As long as you aren’t doing it to defraud somebody, all’s fair in love and government bureaucracy.
In my case, my Spitfire wears the “VIN” (chassis number, it’s old) of the FIRST Spitfire I bought, which turned out to be terminally rusty. I could not be bothered to swap the registration and pay all the fees associated, so I swapped the chassis plates and called it a day (riveted on). It’s a complete mongrel of a car, so whether it’s really a ’74 or a ’77 makes no difference at all. And now FAR too old to have a title in Maine anyway, though it wasn’t old enough to not need one when I bought it.
Is this a warning
This would have cost about $70 in Maine. Yeesh.
In Maine they would have said “you can’t title that from heah”
Except you can, because Maine doesn’t even title vehicles over 25 years old, other than optionally in exceptional circumstances (basically, you can get a title for your expensive collector car if you really want one).
It cost me $400 to get a title in Illinois for a Tacoma with a clean signed title in the sellers name. $400 for materializing a title from nothing seems like a damn bargain to me.
It’s even more than $400 if you live in Chicago and/or get any plate other than the standard one. Then I think one of the fees is more expensive if your car is newer/more expensive? Gotta check my records for how much Alexi snatched from me on the Miata.. lol
Oh yeah, the newer/more valuable the car is, the more the sales tax. $100 is as cheap as that tax gets. Which is what everything I buy is, because I’m a cheapskate. It used to be $25!
You maybe were tempting attention from the police whilst using flashlights for headlights, but at least you had temp tags! Thanks for the update, I was curious.
True
Though to be fair, I would guess modern LED flashlights would output more lumins than David’s brand new 1952(ish) spec. Jeep
Aren’t 6-volt headlights dimmer than 12-volt ones?
Years ago my non-California ’80 Vanagon Westfalia’s, which had passed smog when I brought it from out of state, exhaust system was failing, and the replacement exhaust system with catalytic converter would cost almost $1000. So, being cheap, I managed to find another ’80 Vanagon Westfalia with a bad engine, but a good exhaust system for $400. I researched the CA smog legal stuff and fould out I could convert my non-CA Vanagon to a CA Vanagon by swapping all the components over!
I successfully swapped components, took it, and all the CA legal documents saying it was acceptable, since I did not expect the techs to know that level of detail, to the DMV. They accepted the swap and I passed smog, though they did take their time digging into the CA smog documentation.
And of course,I managed to sell the “parts” Vanagon Camper to a father/son team as a project for, you guessed it, $400.
I was curious how you ended up going about this after our conversation several months back. Sounds like you went the SB100 route from the sounds of it? This is definitely probably the the cleanest way to go about it. Crossing my fingers for you that no one at the DMV decides that this is a 2026 model year and requires you to install a fully smog legal 80 year old jeep engine!
SB100 means it gets smogged as the car it resembles, and it doesn’t matter how old the engine is. I think he’ll be fine as long as it’s a specially constructed vehicle and not a Jeep(tm). Which it isn’t, because it doesn’t have a Jeep MSO.
Yea, that’s how it should be, but I recall on the Factory five and other hot rod forums back in the day reading horror stories of DMV employees not as familiar with the process seeing that you bought a brand new crate engine, and therefore determining that the drivetrain is “new”, and thereby assigning it the current year.
How is a “new” engine with 1946 design any different from engine components built in 1946 but never assembled until 2026?
Hey, Carroll Shelby once ‘found’ a stack of ’65 Cobra chassis stacked behind his race shop for 30 years or so.
It’s similar in the UK, if you’re using a a pre-1975 engine in your kit-car (which I think is what this Jeep would count as), it doesn’t need to pass emissions, but whether you could convince the person doing the inspection that your brand-new Go Devil counted as an old engine is the question.
Personally I’d either fit an original pre-1975 engine for the inspection, or just cover the new one in grease and dirt so it looks old.
There has to be a twist
Still might be, he hasn’t got it registered yet.
Oh cool! So does it feel like a loophole or like a legit avenue for enthusiasts and small builders?
If this is the California specialty constructed vehicle process, which is what it sounds like, this is a fully on the up and up way to do it. This is what the cobra kit car and T-bucket guys do when they build a new car from scratch. Only downside is you are at the whims of the people at the DMV desk. Some people are familiar with the process and it goes relatively smoothly; others have you running around for months and cause huge roadblocks when they insist your newly built “1964 ford” needs to get smogged and inspected in the same category someone else’s 2026 Camry.
Which is why it might be good to hire the guy who knows who to talk to at the DMV desk.
It’s legit.
Right, I meant more the sensation of it, like is he beating the system and/or exploiting a loophole that might get closed (like kei vehicles), or does it feel like typical government paperwork slog and therefore technically correct – the best kind of correct – and worth the effort.
The wizard should have cut you a deal on his services since you adverised for him to millions (billions?) of readers .
There’s got to be at least a few trillion of us.
Semi-related DMV registration story:
I got lucky around 2008 when I bought an unregistered (and clearly grey market) 1980 Mercedes 230G on ebay and had to get it registered in TX at the DMV after getting the brakes working and transmission synchros fixed. The DMV employee was gracious enough to dig through some old file cabinets and ended up pulling out a dusty old registration guidebook with ‘1980’ on the cover. I knew there was literally no way there was going to be a listing for a European 1980 G wagon in there, and there wasn’t. But there was a listing for a 1980 230TE Wagon, and that was good enough! “Oh here it is, 230 Wagon.” Lol
As long as its 25+ years old, literally all Maine cares about is what it cost new so they can charge you excise tax. And if it wasn’t sold new in the US, and so is not in thier official magic book, they will just take your word for it as long as it sounds reasonable.
I’ve registered some “interesting” things for friends from states that are stupid titles for old cars. But nearly every state has a process for registering a car you bought from a state that doesn’t title old cars at all.
Has Maine just completely stopped enforcing its anti-import law? It was never repealed, but after that first bunch of banned Delicas and such, it seems Maine forgot about it.
No idea, but I wouldn’t be surprised. The Maine BMV works in mysterious ways sometimes.
Amusingly, I am driving my 328! wagon around this week on plates that expired in October (I never bother to register it until I come back the next summer, it just sits in the garage all winter) because they sent the new plates for my BMW to my place in Florida. I have a temp registration printout good until mid-August, so it’s not illegal, but I keep expecting an eagle-eyed cop to pull me over. I don’t think there should be any of the old plates still on the road at this point so it probably will stand out. Maine just decides to issue everybody new plates every now and again.
That reminds me of the time my parents gave me a car (Cadillac my mom inherited from her mom). My dad had signed the title, but my mom hadn’t. The guy behind the DMV counter said, “Why don’t you take this back outside, so your mom can sign it.” So, uhhh… She did 😉
Honestly, I’m a bit disappointed. As someone with a severe bureaucracy kink I hoped you had to navigate a byzantine process and fill out forms that were printed in fraktur due to their age and rarity, but apparently it was a much more reasonable process.
But I guess I’m happy for you because perhaps you didn’t really need more hurdles on your way to Moab
Or at least a registration by combat, somenthing like that
I don’t judge, but maybe this kink is why you don’t have luck lately. Save it for AT LEAST after the fourth date!
Hermes Conrad? You’re real?
Requisition me a beat!
https://carsandbids.com/auctions/3zL0W2Vj/1991-honda-beat?ss_id=e29ea79e-c926-42f7-a323-7f646fdf9227&ref=lr_1_1 🙂
You are technically correct. The best kind of correct.
There’s a neat little book, Roadster, about a guy who builds a Caterham Seven all by himself from the kit. The chapter where he has to get it registered as a homemade vehicle is fascinating. IIRC, his ordeal was (a little) easier b/c he basically had a single invoice for the crates of parts.
But… didn’t this unregistered vehicle drive on public roads to Moab…?
Guess I’m missing some of this General Purpose vehicle’s tale.
As I understand it, the temp tags he drove with count as a temporary conditional operating permit, so to speak. If he were pulled over along the way (in California at least, I’m not sure about the other states) he would have been covered.
Other states seem to respect the permit. Once bought a car in Cali, got stopped in Colorado, and the state trooper didn’t have an issue because I was still within the time window noted on the permit.
Assuming they work like the temp tags when you buy a car, my understanding is that other states have to respect it the same as permanent plates (the whole “full faith and credit” thing in the constitution). That’s part of why Texas finally fixed our buyer paper plates issue, because it wasn’t just Altimas driving down I-10 at 100mph on three different sized donuts, it was people making fake Texas paper plates in other states.
Or you could have taken it to Torch Title & Registration Services LLC. For the low price of nothing, he can provide you with an official Farm Use plate and a notarized certificate of “let’s all just be cool about that”.
Oh. Right. Farm use. Must’ve forgotten that but.
Or maybe Matt could have hooked him up but then he’d have to come to NYC I guess. Nobody beats him! Nobody!!
Plus twenty bucks for two bales of hay, which said vehicle is transporting from one agricultural plot of land to another.
Or a package of chicken antibiotics that will fit in your glove box. Or horse ketamine, but that might be problematic.
The ‘Farm Use’ truck and completely unregistered Changli, and now the 2CV with Argentina plates do bother me a bit. Bite the bullet and get it done. I have less issue with the Montana registered CrossCab and Taxi. All my cars are registered in PA, insured and inspected annually, no shenanigans.
NC allows you to display plates from the year of the vehicle (even non-NC plates) as long as you have your actual plate with you in the car and can show it to a police officer if you get pulled over.
In ny you have to have an annual inspection, but the last time I had a car registered in ny, they only cared if the car was stopped in NY all my NY registered cars were in California. It wasn’t actually useful, only interesting.
I was a bit leery with the headline but I knew our DT was as honest as a limo is long
Don’t get we wrong, I’m glad that everything was easy and safe and sound for DT, but in some way I was expecting just a little more action, drama or at least fireworks.
You need to watch the video it was crazy
Sometimes just spending the money to have someone else do the legwork is just easier. They’re familiar with the process, know which DMV office to deal with, can smooth out hiccups in the process.
Especially given David’s extreme time/pressure crunch for Moab.
Bureaucracy isn’t drama, action, or fireworks. More like tedium, fussy details, and paper hoops. Snatching defeat from the jaws of Jeep victory because of paperwork would have been heartbreaking.
I’ll gladly pay someone to deal with tedium I just don’t have time for/can’t mentally handle/ dngaf about.
No time, but even with time, this was a smart move. It took me almost 1.5 months to get a 5×8 utility trailer I built registered in MA because the kit manufacturer put my name on the CoO instead of the distributor’s who never even saw it as I ordered it online and had it shipped to my house. I started to suspect they were f’n with me when they had me go on side quests only for the next RMV person to reject it and ask for something else. The last person I went to at a different RMV all but confirmed it when they asked what the notarized letter was for and shook their head slightly at my response before telling me, “Yeah, you didn’t need this.” Lesson learned: go to the trashy town RMV where they deal with OUI degenerates all day and aren’t bored. Prior to that, all my interactions with the RMV defied their bad reputation, so it wasn’t that I had some kind of attitude. (I’m always extra pleasant not just because there’s no sense in being a dick to service workers, but because I wonder if they can put a “F this one” black mark in your file and I’ve known people who always seemed to have bad interactions where mine went smoothly. I even got away with keeping my license from too many speeding tickets when they let me take a retraining course twice, which they’re only supposed to be allowed to do once.)
I’ve found the CA and NV DMV staff to be pretty great over the years, certainly better that a few USPS counter staff I’ve dealt with.
In Nevada, the Reno DMV is a hellscape. There is one office, the lines are long, getting an appointment is difficult. The DMV offices in the nearby counties are not supposed to and not happy about handling transactions that the Reno office should handle. However, if you go a bit further afield, there is a sometimes almost no wait and the staff are a pleasure.
For example, my buddy and I have traded several trailers between us. We ended up at the Yerington DMV with a great staff person at the end of the day and practically felt like all three of us should be drinking beer while completing a series of transactions. it was great!
In California, the DMV culture varies a bit by location. However, in some locations, the clients are a source of trouble in that they are unprepared, confrontational without provocation and a bit unintelligent.
Yeah, I’ve dealt with probably more than half a dozen RMVs in MA (they keep moving locations and I’ve moved around a little) and I’ve only had good experiences (I mean, it’s the RMV, but it’s not the fault of the reps) until the trailer. The last woman I dealt with over the trailer was cool and we talked a little about wood working and stuff.
Tracy (the town) DMV is great.
And the 11 Greenwich street DMV I’m Manhattan is an enchanted wonderland of friendly helpfulness and efficiency. Especially for NY city. Really for anywhere actually.
Well, let’s not forget his old Jeep pickup that he weasled past Calif registration and smog laws for years.
Had a college friend who went grad school at Berkley. He lamented about the cost to bring his Ohio registered car to California. Ironically, my same year Pennsylvania registered car would have transferred without a hitch.