Believe me, I don't like unnecessary govt. interference into people's lives, but this is a good program. The problem with any strict ideological stand is that you cannot be flexible and accept when they do something right. No one is being forced to sell their car to the state, so what's your problem w/ it? And nobody is going to sell a car for $650 that they can get $900 for, unless they are an idiot.
You cannot own an old car that has value in CA. and not know it; an old lady driving a '68 Camaro w/ a 6-banger gets asked 14 times a day if she wants to sell. And gets another 5 notes on the windshield. Same w/ any early 911, even if it's a stinking POS that belongs in the junkyard.
Hot Rod magazine has an agenda, and a shrinking advertising base as baby boomers become too old to drive and the next generation doesn't give a schit about old American cars. I've read it since the '60s and I'm a fan, but let's face it, any car that you or I would want to own is not in danger of being sold for $650.
One last thing; the 1960s were not the good old days in SoCal the way they were in the middle of nowhere. (Rural Oregon). Smog was so bad that it made your eyes burn and caused immediate respiratory problems in people. If it had not been dealt with by govt. regulations, Southern California would not be an economically viable place today. It would resemble the worst super-fund site ever imagined, think 3 mile island or some river in China where they dump raw mercury in mixed w/ fertiliser and pig schit. Yeah, private business deals w/ problems like that real effectively.
Thanks to the EPA, (whose existence still is not understood I'm sure in the region where Ted Kozinski hid), the air in Los Angeles today is magnitudes cleaner than 40 years ago, even w/ 3 times as many vehicles on the road in the county and more ships and dirty diesel trucks than ever. This is solely the result of govt. regulation. Private industry cannot take one iota of credit for it. If it was up to the American businessman or the auto industry, $5.00 per car in profit would trump clean air. I am not exagerating. Clean air and water is one example of private enterprise and the free market being absolutely worthless. Don't believe me? I have a river in China for you to swim in.
