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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