In Leno's defense, smog checks for older cars can be absolute nonsense in CA.

I have an older car caught up in that nonsense. The header pipes cracked and replacement parts didn't exist so I had a shop build some. They did amazing work and function perfectly; it's just pipe about a foot long.

Anyway, the smog test shop sees that and fails visual inspection. That super sucks. There are no CARB exempt headers, and OEM is't available. I spent $$$ to put the old, leaking pipes back on, and send it back to the shop. Visual passes, smog passes. Next stop to the mechanic to swap headers back again.

At the moment there is a lot more to smog testing an older car than a tube up the tailpipe and actual emission data which is the whole point of having this program in the first place.

Leno likes cars, keeps his in great condition, and may simply need replacement parts manufactured that no longer exist.

Edit: that said, I hoped the Leno law would fail. I looked up registration for my older car as a "classic". Yikes that's pricy! And has all kinds of strings attached like special registration and have to be garaged. This would be devastating to the classic car community.

Nothing against strict smog regulations. But it's wildly hypocritical that the government can be all hardass about it yet can't even manage to finish building ONE FUCKING TRAIN LINE.

This word, "creep", seems to have lost all meaning. What's creepy, specifically, about trying to run his old cars? If America has anything resembling a culture, it's cars.

CA needs exemptions. These vehicles are few and far between, and getting even more rare every single year.

The emissions from these handfuls of cars is negligible in comparison to what's stuck in traffic on the 101.

CARB in California is a joke, it requires so many parts that literally are just a piece of bent pipe to be submitted for approval to be certified. Parts which have nothing to do with emissions.

I had a car caught up in this in Colorado and had to get rid of it. Specifically, I had to remove a bunch of obsolete air pump equipment and update the fueling system with a much more modern electronically controlled system. The car was measurably better than it's original standards but failed the visual check because it was missing the old, polluting, inefficient and unavailable parts.

If the car still meets the emissions of it's day, put a mileage limit on it and let it go. If there are too many on the road then implement a nontransferrable lottery system to get classic plates for them. The amount of pollution these few tens of thousands of vehicles put out being used a couple of times a month is a drop in the bucket compared to everything else that continues to get a pass.

Why not start banning camp fires? What about old boats? Stationary power units? These all seem to get a pass and probably dwarf the emissions of classic cars being used occasionally.

This is sad - most of these enthusiast vehicles are well cared for and driven less than 1-2k miles a year. The people who were asking for this were looking for a legal path to register their vehicles.

They'll still be registered, just in Montana under an LLC because they don't have a better option.

A handful of people, who spend a lot of time keeping old cars running and looking good, are not the problem. Not even close. The overall pollution from a parade of old cars is negligible compared to everyone going back and forth to work every day.

The problem here is that people will just register those cars in other states. So that means you still get the same smog issues without the registration revenues.

Wish they'd do a better job policing modern cars blowing smoke constantly from abuse that somehow pass smog checks. Stop relying solely on computer monitoring and let techs do a real inspection again.

Leno is a narcissistic asshole trying to push a law that only benefits rich collectors like himself, in that respect I'm glad it failed.

He could just move to Mississippi or one of the other handful of states that don't have any vehicle inspections. Hell, we have Cruisin' The Coast coming up soon, I bet people would love to see Leno's rides.

Not like most of his classic vehicles are meant as daily drivers anyways.

The problem is that California has a lot of these cars, and they are daily driven. The solution, which will be expensive, is to run the cars on ethanol.

Some old guy wanting to drive old cars deserves a "What an effing creep"? That's just sad :(