{"id":452579,"date":"2026-09-03T21:38:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T21:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/452579\/"},"modified":"2026-09-03T21:38:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T21:38:15","slug":"california-is-about-to-pass-jay-lenos-law-but-its-too-late-for-a-lot-of-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/452579\/","title":{"rendered":"California Is About To Pass \u2018Jay Leno\u2019s Law\u2019 But It\u2019s Too Late For A Lot Of Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

If California\u2019s Governor Gavin Newsom has any aspirations for higher office, he\u2019d 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\u2019s roads. Unfortunately, after Leno\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

I always thought I\u2019d 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 \u2014 it was truly a truck\u2019s 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\u2019d ever owned. The only problem was, I moved to California, and California\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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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\u00a0California\u2019s Smog Rules Are Pushing Me To Sell My Beloved 1985 Jeep J10, And The Improbable \u2018Leno\u2019s Law\u2019 Is My Only Hope<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"J10<\/p>\n

But then this happened: Leno\u2019s Law Is Officially Dead, Which Means Classic Car Owners In California Will Continue to Suffer<\/a>. I later wrote<\/a> 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\u2019s replacement, the Jeep J10\u2019s successor, the Jeep Comanche, configured in exactly the same way \u2014 long bed, regular cab, bench seat, stickshift, 4\u00d74, inline-six:<\/p>\n

\"50ca4884<\/p>\n

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\u2019m 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 \u2014 cars that aren\u2019t really daily drivers anyway \u2014 seems pointless. Which is why I hope Governor Gavin Newsom doesn\u2019t screw this up.<\/p>\n

The New York Times breaks the bill down, writing in its piece Jay Leno\u2019s Classic Car Bill Passes in California Legislature<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 which generally require gasoline-powered vehicles from model year 1976 onward to undergo a smog check every two years \u2014 are overly restrictive.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of these cars that we\u2019re talking about, they get driven to a car show on a Saturday,\u201d Mr. Leno said. \u201cThe car\u2019s parked all day, and then it\u2019s driven home at night.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

You can read the whole story on The New York Times. It\u2019s a bit slanted, focusing on the fact that these old cars could produce 20x the emissions of a new car, and even though it\u2019s not going to account for a lot of vehicle-miles, it\u2019s still a step in the wrong direction, public-health-wise. I get where they\u2019re coming from, but we as a society have to decide what we think is acceptable from an emissions standpoint, because absolute zero-emissions isn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019m sure many tens of thousands of other 1970s and 1980s cars were either scrapped or sold out of state due to their owners\u2019 inability to get them through SMOG; it\u2019s time for California\u2019s eradication of one of the coolest automotive eras to come to an end.<\/p>\n

Top graphic image: David Tracy<\/p>\n

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