Welcome to Californication, suckers...
As I have often stated, I am a native-born Californian as well as a half-Irish/half Austrian-Slovenian person. I am also a sports car fancier. But let me qualify that a bit for you.
I am not one of these mindless numbskulls who adulate NASCAR, big, brawny American heavy-metal muscle cars, or even a typical roadway speed-freak (you know the type: those who always drive whatever they’re operating, be it a motorcycle or an automobile at least 20-30 mph above the posted speed limits). I like to think I’m a bit more refined than all that, as a ‘classic sports car’ buff...someone who has a taste for fine older machines as the historically evolved significant and technological artifacts they are.
As a historian both by preference and academic background, for me the story of the design and development of classic motor vehicles has always had a strong attraction for me. I am particularly drawn to German auto designs and styling exercises, although I do have a couple of non-sporty ‘practical/daily-use’ automobiles of US and Korean origin. Think of these as my good old reliable & faithful burros. Not all gussied-up but efficient beasts of burden and highly regarded, nonetheless.
To complicate this mix of rather disparate personal characteristics, I am additionally a semi-neo-Luddite, who HIGHLY resents having the quality of my life dictated to me by America’s capitalistic, hard-sell commercialism and corporate marketing concerns. All of these components of my personality do NOT make for an easy-going amalgam of personal traits that may be ‘lived-with’ effortlessly. Kudos, therefore, to my long-suffering wife, who being of the Chinese astrological sign of the ‘Wood-Rooster’ is not commonly regarded as smoothly compatible with a ‘Fire-Dog’ personality such as mine!
In fact, wifie’s baby-sister once slipped-up by divulging that she (meaning wifie) “wasn’t the easiest person to live with”, given Rooster-People’s perfectionist obsession with the smallest quotidian details. But, that’s the luck of the draw, isn’t it? We’ve managed to live domestically together, well enough, for some...let’s see, 38 years is it, to date? And the way I see it, anyone who can live with me, despite all my exponentially diverse tastes, excursions, eccentricities and predilections, and not be regularly tempted to spike my lemonade with cyanide is already somewhat of a saint. A colleague of mine even referred to her once as Saint ‘X’, given this ability of hers to humor me in most of my often wild-eyed (Irish) tangential excesses, despite the demands made on her marital human tolerance! She always manages to be there with a 'reality-check' safety-net to ensure a safe recovery re-entry to the world of harsh and sobering realities, after one of my virtual excursions!
But all of the foregoing is an attempt at back-story context to help you understand where and why I’m coming from a certain attitudinal stance, concerning what follows here.
My main purpose in all the above digital ‘tappity-tap’ wordy excess is to tell all of you about what is simply another extreme drawback to living in this ferschluginner, bureaucratically constipated, aesthetically dissipated and criminally mismanaged state (California)...a state that was blissfully far less complicated and much more bucolic back in the immediate post-WW2 era in which I was born.
Back in California of the 1950s, this state was, by and large, an ordered, civilly well-regulated, tolerable and socially/economically stable part of the Western United States in which to live, have a family, attend school and settle down in. Yes, the predominantly white majority had a few kinks that needed ironing-out, but the California economy was booming, thanks to flourishing ‘Cold War’ era aerospace industries down south (LA/San Diego), our abundence of scenic state and national parks, rich resources and unparalled coastal areas were still unbesmirched and untrammeled. Our cities & urban settlements were not yet overburdened with illegal immigrants, on-the-dole freeloaders, homeless indigents, trailer-trash and Federal hand-out parasite-professonals. "Diversity" was an accepted national characteristic, fully exemplified in California (albeit, as noted above, still requiring some attention in certain ethnic respects).
As regards its major cities, San Francisco remained one of the loveliest metropolitan areas on the entire West Coast, possessed of picturesque scenic beauty unmatched just about anywhere, and an absolute delight both to live-in and to visit as a tourist. Sacramento, its capital, was still just a largish, sleepy little cow-town (ironically, it's still that way today) that just happened to be the agreed-upon and historic center of all political activity of any importance in the state. Almost everyone, except for a small statistical handful of ‘gender-benders’ and closet-gays clustered largely in certain districts of San Francisco (adding a certain risqué shade of local color to the San Francisco experience), was a God-fearing Christian, dedicatedly heterosexual, employed and busily raising a family in California’s then-healthy urban environment.
Today, by comparison, California (and San Francisco in particular) is virtually unrecognisable, a grotesque simulacrum of what it used to be. San Francisco is unfit for hygienic human habitation (unless one is a wealthy professional, living in one of the city’s exclusive ‘gated communities’), given the filth and homeless detritus that clogs its streets, and for the past 30 years has been virtually ruled and politically dominated by a rich upper-crust progressive civic government clique (most of whom have also spread their particularly bizarre and demented influence to Sacramento and its legislative bodies there...hello, Governor ‘Gravel Noisome’ and ‘Uber-progressive & wealthy maven, Nandy Petulosi, etc.).
Sacramento has itself grown into an aesthetically odious haven for the radical LGBTQ+ crowd (who have migrated from exorbitantly expensive SFO to far more affordable ‘Suckingtomatoes’, as we affectionately refer to it now, all bringing their Subaru cars with them). The city’s civic government, rather than being ministered to by dedicated “locals” who actually work whole-heartedly by and for Sacramento residents, is today chock-a-block filled with political wannabes of all sorts of whacko bents, who all aspire to run someday for the Senate or Assembly and who could care less (from all appearances) about their immediate constituents (hello Daryl Steinberg and his cohorts), or burned-out former state politicians who still aspire to political prominence. It is virtually ruled (at least in the State’s lower-house Assembly) by spineless, weak-willed political charlatans and its senators are all millionaires (at least).
On top of all this, for the last 30 or 40s years, this state has been ruled by an out-of-control, rabidly progressive, and totally detached-from-reality leftist liberal Democratic Party for whom DEI/Critical Theory and Political Correctness are holy words engraved on stone tablets and enshrined throughout the state.
Quite the change for a formerly, smoothly run and mutually agreeable and altrusitic state run by conservative Republicans (who believe that criminals should be jailed, that any sort of statutory crime is punishable by law, that habit-forming drugs are bad, and adequate enforcement of laws and regulations is inarguably de rigueur to assure domestic tranquility).
Well folks (especially those of you in other states who think that our governor ‘Gravel Noisome’...he of the perfect coiffeur and always available for Hollywood-style photo ops), would make a sure-fire swell and dandy Prez of the USA!), let me here elevate your consciousness a teensy, tiny bit, by apprising you that this-here state is NO LONGER a place any reasonable, law-abiding, socially responsible and morally-straight (as excerpted from the former Boy Scout Creed: “On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.”) person would (or should) want to exist within!
And all that’s just the social underpinnings of our status quo that obtain in regard to ‘Californication’ (as I cynically refer to it). Economically, the state has been repeatedly cited as one of the absolutely worst dens of dysfunctional economic and civic mismanagement imaginable (move over Minnesota!). We suffer under some of the highest taxes in the entire United States, get the least bang for our middle-class buck just about anywhere you can point to, pay the highest gas prices (especially in Suckingtomatoes), and are so oppressed by economic applications of SEI/Woke/PC/Critical Theory ideologies in our state institutions and schools that virtually every major corporate entity in our state is presently either moved out or in the process of relocating to a less hostile/repressive business environment.
On an ordinary, grass-roots level, people who believe in social order, non-partisan equality, non-discrimination, enforcement of civic laws and regulations, and manifesting personal responsibility in their personal and civic lives, are all fleeing the state in droves. In fact, such is the emigration of ‘responsible, ordinary’ families from our formerly pleasant state that a current joke has it that Governor Gravel Noisome is taking under-the-table-kickbacks from the U-Haul Company, since he’s... to use Elon Musk’s wickedly droll observation... “U-Haul’s star salesman of the year.”
OK, I am sure you’ll readily agree that all of the above is a HUGE digression for whatever I was intending to focus upon here, but I thought you needed some background on exactly how distressingly unsatisfactory it is to survive, let along thrive reasonably in the formerly Great State of Californication.
Now that several pages of requisite preface have been taken care of, my primary purpose of throwing this barrel of sour grapes (once California’s most important crop...no longer) at you in one big “SPLOOSH” is to complain about a couple of the state’s most oppressively bureaucratic agencies, namely the Department of Motor Vehicles and the California Air Resources Board (or CARB, as they prefer to use its acronym).
The Cal DMV aside, which is one of the worst, most disagreeably awful bureaucracies in civic government, the “CARB”, which is the agency that formulates and enforces the State’s draconian automobile SMOG regulations, is perhaps one of the most absolutely annoying and heartless bureaucracies you can name in Suckingtomatoes.
In this particular context, I refer to the state’s heavy-handed adjudication of SMOG mandates levied upon all the vehicles of our state.
In 2025, it was estimated that the state had approximately 35.98 million validly REGISTERED motor vehicles (this includes cars, trucks, motorcycles and trailers).
Of that total, a break-down of 1995 and prior year registered vehicles (back to the 1976 “exempt” cutoff) yields a sub-total of about 615,000, whereas vehicles registered of 1996 and newer vintage yields about 35.1 million.
This break-down of the two major categories is driven by the fact that 1995 and earlier vehicles equipped with a rudimentary computerized fault-detection/monitoring system are of the OBD-I type (a simpler and less complex system, compared to the succeeding OBD-2 system that 1996 and later cars feature). “OBD” of course refers to “On-Board Diagnostics.”
As such, less than 0.02% of all 1976-1995 vehicles on the California roads (again considering that the 3.1 million figure also includes non-motorised trailers and motorcycles) fall into the OBD-1 (pre-1996) classification.
Consider also that of the total 1995-and-before registrations, all cars from 1975 and before that year are considered “classic” cars and are thereby exempt from the state’s SMOG laws, but the total of such cars is even more miniscule than the total of all 1995 and prior cars, since as 50+ year old classics, they are annually attritted more and more away.
By its own admission, it is noted by the state that the total of ALL pre-1996 vehicles is “shrinking rapidly”, furthermore, due to retirement, scrappage and the state’s STRICT EMISSIONS REQUIREMENTS (emphasis-emphasis).
Keep all these figures in mind as we continue to examine all this mess, here.
Now, I happen to have a 1995 Chevrolet Silverado K-1500 pickup truck that I keep in excellent condition, with just over 100K miles on the odometer. It requires a semi-annual smog test to be registered, according to state motor vehicle codes. The vehicle is a 4WD type, extended cab truck that is the perfect vehicle for very occasional trips (such as holiday excursions, short vacation trips here and there, and so forth) and I usually put less than 800 miles on it each year (usually far less than that).
This year the car was due for its semi-annual smog test and while it passed all the parameters except N02 (Nitrous Oxide emissions) with high marks, it suddenly indicated it had an N02 value that exceeded the maximum allowable, hence it “failed” the State test.
Trying to understand this seemingly inexplicable increase in N02 emissions, my inquiry revealed that in its infinite wisdom (read: absolutely NO WISDOM of any tangible sort), the state’s CARB had capriciously and arbitrarily decided to drop the allowable N02 limit by several hundred parts per million.
Why exactly was that, I asked myself? All the evidence points inarguably towards the fact that due to pressure exerted by our esteemed mess of a governor (‘Gravel Noisom’), in his haste to eliminate entirely all ICE (Internally Combusted Engines) from our roads and force consumers to purchase nothing but EVs (Electric Vehicles) by a specific date in the near future, had ‘urged’ CARB to hasten the attrition rate of pre-1996 vehicles by imposing even more draconian emissions standards on these vehicles. Well, thanks a whole heapin’ lot, Gov!
Ok. This fine kettle of worms leaves me and a VERY small percentage of older vehicle owners with the perplexing dilemma of having to find and correct (if even possible) whatever inefficient system component has caused the out-of-allowable-limits problem, which sounds like a not-unreasonable undertaking. But hold on there, pardner!
Earlier OBD-1 vehicles require a smog & emissions assessment that differs rather significantly from 1996 and newer cars (which all rely strictly on the newer onboard OBD-2 computer interface to yield test results of compliance or failure). The older (95 and earlier) vehicles must be tested on a dynamometer (a machine that uses rollers under the driving wheels to simulate highway conditions) and a ‘tailpipe’ emissions probe (think of this as a rectal colonoscope for cars, if that helps).
Again, sounds like no problem, right? Just find a SMOG station that can take care of that for you, right?
No such luck, bunkie, since state-certified SMOG measurement stations (designated ‘STAR only’ emissions stations that are limited to test-only erstwhile ‘high-polluter” vehicles, meaning pre-1996) and are allowed to measure and record test values ONLY; they are disallowed by law from repairing, disgnosing or otherwise servicing a vehicle’s SMOG system that is indicates it is not working properly.
B*O*I*N*G! Catch-22! (Joseph Heller was WAY ahead of his time!)
Undoubtedly, owing to pressure brought on by the State’s Cal DMV, CARB and various auto-industry lobbyists, this sort of “Test AND repair” station option is being gradually but irresistibly eliminated, since the CARB/DMV has the designated authority to do anything it wishes to in regulating “issues” it has determined require “rectification.”
The result of all the above is that a capricious and highly arbitrary form of discrimination exists in the form of this concerted effort to get pre-95 vehicles off the road, like it or not.
All of this said, it is still narrowly possible to find a state-certified station that can and will perform a needed ‘test and repair’ diagnostic service on a vehicle such as mine that has exceeded one of the three chief emissions category limits, but the search required to find one is both exhausting, frustrating and burdensome beyond all reason (another Catch-22). I have spent at least the equivalent of several days in the past week in such a fruitless search, here in one of the biggest ‘greater urban’ areas in the state, thus far to no avail, and all because I refuse to kowtow to these effete and totally uncaring state bureaucrats and their pie-in-the-sky ideal of eliminating ALL ICE vehicle from our roads. It is by any economic reckoning a goal that for a number of reasons, including a belatedly calculated intolerable burden on the state’s patchwork electric grid, is not just totally unworkable but absurdly, patently impossible, given that oil appears not just necessary but perhaps the only continuingly reasonable and affordable option for use in our automobile engines in the immediate future!
It needs to be pointed out here that given the incredibly small (and statistically insignificant) number of 95-and-earlier “Older” vehicles still in use at this time (roughly only 16K or so), the bureaucratic burden imposed upon us by our beloved DMV and the CARB to ‘manage’ this small nume r of older vehicles is infinitely insignificant...yet these state civil-service agencies refuse to concern themselves (or tie up similarly “tiny” administrative resources & numbers of personnel) worrying about it. Consumers are thus capriciously left to “like it or lump it!” [Tough luck, Charlie...next item of business?]
What we see at work here is a prime example of the sort of nasty and needless bureaucratic overkill policies that one encounters in this worst of all mismanaged states (aside from the Grand Prize Winner of Tiny Tim Walz’s Minnesota, of course, which now bears the title of the Fraud Capitol of the Nation) at all levels!
The auto-industry is also a not-so-subtle partner in legalized crime with the state, in that they all want to sell new cars...vehicles that now cost what just a few yeas ago would be the equivalent of a very up-scale new home in some of the poorer parts of the country! And financial institutions also crowd the queue to hop on this nefarious, scatter-gun style, profit-generating bandwagon, since making new car loans is a major source of their annual income.
All in all, for the poor 95-and-earlier car owner in this accursed state, it’s like being a shipwrecked sailor in the ocean who has suddenly become the target of a massive shark feeding frenzy.
As for me and my much-loved 1995, 4WD Chevy Silverado K-1500 truck, I’m still in the trenches, bravely fighting this battle on its behalf to successfully find a SMOG station that will agree to test my “old” truck (and that has the needed dynamometer and tailpipe sensor apparatus to do the job) because I am an embattled experienced veteran who has fought bureaucracies for decades and grossly resents the unfair struggle consumers must wage against uncaring and reality-disassociated state and corporate agencies/businesses.
Stay-tuned. I may have even more to say on this VERY sore subject soon. Meanwhile, if you happen to still live in this ferschlugginer state of the radically progressive damned consumer prole (AKA: Californication), I strongly urge you to consider relocating out of it to other regions of America ASAP, where state bureaucrats and politicians don’t have a certain part of their cranial anatomy blithely shoved firmly up their nether end...! Grrrrrr-Grrrrrr! Grumble-grumble!
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AS PROMISED, HERE'S MORE (dated 6 Feb 26)
POSTSCRIPT: (dated 6 Feb 26)
As promised (threatened?), here’s a final note to add to this horribly annoying matter of the OBD-1 ( 1976 to 1995) versus OBD-2 (1996 and onwards) that Californicatia has, in its infinite (-ly detached) wont, created for all residents of this Californicated state in its misguided and grossly premature aspirations to get all ICE (internally combusted engines) vehicles off the road and replaced by EV (Electric Vehicles).
OK. The story so far: my 1995 Chevrolet Silverado C/L-1500 pickup truck came due for its semi-annual SMOG test (as a theoretically ‘High-Polluter’ vehicle). So I complied (I should have guessed from the fact that the registration notice was printed in bright-red blood that this would involve some pain), had the vehicle tested. Lo and behold, it passed everything (hydrocarbon, CO emissions) except the N02 (Nitrous Oxide) requirement, earning it a big red FAIL.
This necessitates the owner of said ‘Gross Polluter’ having to do several things: 1) immediately start wearing sackcloth & ashes, 2) self-flagellate one’s back with a metal-tipped flail, 3) gnash one’s teeth and swear upon Blessed Saint Brigit’s (a popular Irish Saint) Pole Dance Knickers (again) that one will do penance for your vehicle’s grievous transgression of Californica State DMV codes! OH, yes, one also has to begin a ‘Holy Grail’ search for a shop that not only CAN (but actually do) diagnostics, so as to learn where the said vehicle’s emissions system is at fault. The ‘Catch-22’ clause here is that only designated shops are permitted to perform this sort of work by Govenor Noisome’s DMV/CARB attack dogs.
Fine, sez I. I can afford to spend a bit of time hunting down a ‘permitted’ SMOG shop that can find and correct my truck’s problem! No sweat!
My week-long search for such a shop in this, the third largest urban area in the whole bloody state came up NIL. Now, consider if you will, that the Sacramento Greater Urban Area likely has more ‘citified’ Good-Old-Boys (who own and drive older US-made Pickups) than any other part of the state. Suckingtomatoes is, after all, still just a glorified hick cow-town that also (coincidentally) hosts the entire state legislative system, with all its nightmarish thousands of bureaucrats (or is it “bureau-rats?”)!
And why did I strike out, you ask, unconsciously feeling pangs of empathy that probably stem from your own ownership of a pre-1996 Chevy, Ford or Chrysler truck.
Simply put, because too many SMOG shops have decided that the easy money is in 1996 and newer vehicles, because in their case, all you have to do is hook up a computer to their OBD-2 system and out pops the whole report. Nice, neat and easy and NOT requiring a dynamometer and cumbersome tailpipe probe to sniff the vehicle’s effluent like a randy Bloodhound in heat! Therefore, 9 out of 10 shops you call will give you some sort of reasonable excuse (a few I ran into include 1. My shop burned down last year; 2. Our dynamometer is down and the parts to repair it are hard to find; 3. Our shop guard dog gets nervous when the system cranks up, so we decided to not do pre-1996 vehicles, etc. [Number four here ACTUALLY happened, I swear it on a stack of Alexandria Olivia-Cortez’s latest book!]
Well, BLEEP-BLEEP! What’s left? At that point the lesser person is likely ready to jump off the nearest cliff…after pushing said vehicle off the same steep bluff. [NOTE: The Cal DMV probably has calculated this logical response well in advance and includes it in its ‘Confidential State DMV’ handbook for new hires.]
But wait! The game isn’t over, after all! No need to “donate” your prized pre-1996 truck to PBS after all! After getting referral-after-referral by shop-after-shop, I FINALLY made a contact that paid off in this area! This place is named ‘AUTO-START’ and is located in the burgeoning City of Elk Grove, just 20 miles south of Suckingtomatoes! Hallelujah!
AUTO-START will do a complete SMOG-system diagnostic AND take care of any needed repair without any excuses, objections or sundry obfuscations in the doing! If you happen to have a pre-1996 pickup truck you love to death (like I do mine!), the owner (named ‘Benny’) is a SMOG wizard of many, many years experience and he will give you the straight (and complete) poop on your poor vehicle’s particular problem! AUTO-START is, of course, both in the phone book and on-line-searchable, so if you need personal automotive salvation, brother, Benny is ‘Da Man!’
Turns out that the replacement EGR that my long-suffering truck had put in it two years ago (by another shop) wasn’t working properly; it had a sticky diaphragm. Hence the C0/Hydrocarbon values were perfectly below normal BUT it had elevated N02 values! Given readouts of this sort, it’s almost a cinch your EGR is being a nasty little, hateful & incalcitrant component on your otherwise cooperative and well-cared-for vehicle! Replacing the EGR cures the problem: N02 levels are subsequently once more well-below permitted max values and all is well in your Californicated automotive world, yet again!
However, given the voluminous litany of hurdles, quagmires, conundrums and enigmas pre-1996 vehicle owners with failed vehicles must negotiate and deal with, and despite the otherwise straightforward repairs that will restore your truck to acceptable legality, having a shop do all this for you has resulted in woeful prices that range all over the board! With average California shop-rates now about US$180/hour, and parts prices about 50% higher than the pre-COVID days, it may cost you the dollar equivalent of a first born son, or perhaps the sale of your mother-in-law into slavery! [My advice? Keep the son; sell the old bat!]
I ended up paying a total of just a few dollars short of a GRAND for all the work (that includes the failed first test and the subsequent diagnosis and repairs). I mean, H*O*L*Y C*R*A*P! If this sort of example of the result of Californication’s infinite CARB and DMV disdain for the economic well-being of its citizens isn’t enough to motivate all the Irish-Americans in the reader audience to grab their pikes and shillelaghs and head for the barricades, I don’t know what is!
All right. There you have it. The whole gruesome, tragic story of pre-1996 vehicle owners in this ferschluginer state! But before I go, one final bit of advice. Benny (the SMOG master) confided, “DO NOT SELL YOUR 1988-1995 Chevrolet C/K-1500 pick-up truck, whatever you do! That particular series of Chevy light-to-medium-duty trucks is incredibly popular among the auto cognoscenti! Everybody wants one!”
He related stories of people so keen to find one of these vehicles that they actually follow C/K-1500 owners around and stop them to ask if they want to sell their truck! Just a word to the wise and discerning motor-head in this West Coast Bureaucratic Hell called (for good reason) “Californicatia!”
See you all at the DMV! (They’re easy to find: Just look for the red profile of a hellish-looking Devil holding a pitchfork on the DMV offices!).
I'm sure the native tribes that lived there for thousands of years were a bit upset when the Spaniards came in in the 1500s and enslaved them. And the Spaniards probably didn't like those damn Russians settling in the north. But what really got the Spaniards upset, was all those land grabbing immigrants from the east who never stopped coming until there was a huge flood in 1849 that transformed bucolic San Francisco into a hot bed of thievery and debauchery. Things settled down a bit until the 1930s when the Okies invaded California and the damn liberals wrote books like Grapes of Wrath and vagrant like Woody Guthrie wrote un-American songs like This Land. And then those drugged out, pot smoking hippies descended upon San Francisco in the 1960s and brought more ruin to it. San Francisco became too expensive for most to live in and trickle down economics fired by Silicon Valley entrepreneurship, has created San Francisco only for the ultrarich, like you described.
When I revisited Redwood City a few times, it remained very much the same. People refused to leave there and to drive newer cars because cars lasted so long without the middle western rust belt. But when I interviewed in 1978 in Long Beach I stayed in a rather new Holiday Inn down by the waterfront with oil pumping donkeys in view and the skies definitely orange looking from stagnant air and chemicals. Another interview at Northridge brought me to the San Fernando Valley. What a depressing looking place that was even in the 1970s. Probably more so today.
Back in 1968, I bought a 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado with 53,000 miles on it. It was equipped with a special smog reduction air pump system that was unique to California at that time. I really think that if California had not placed those restrictions, some parts of the state, particularly the LA area and some parts of the Bay Area would have air that was literally unbreathable. It made the car under powered, but I still got around about 20 to 30 miles or more over the speed limit. It was a great drag car. Surprised some hopped up hot rods on El Camino with the grip of those front wheels and the power of that 425 cid engine.
I feel your pain. While I didn't have that problem as my 1973 Chevy Monte Carlo was continuing to be fixable and passing state emissions, going from lead gas to lead free gas by overhaul of hardened valves until I send it packing with my nephew in 2007. But my 2006 modified Ford Freestar is reaching the point where parts may not be available to keep it running like it has been. Texas stopped inspecting cars, but reinstated the emissions test this year. But they didn't hook up the tailpipe guzzler like they used to with the Monte. They just checked it on my computer and I passed, for now.
But Waymos are driving around the city and pretty soon, we won't have a gasoline car problem anymore just a lot of hopped up electrics with zero to infinity acceleration for the kids to wreck.
Ron