California, after all, is (was) the place where car culture was born. It is the home of the Beach Boys and Ronnie and the Daytonas. It is (was) one of the greatest places to drive a car, if you enjoyed driving. Bullitt – the Steve McQueen movie which sucked but which is worth watching because it has one of the best, non-CGI car chase scenes ever filmed (with McQueen doing much of the driving) was filmed in San Francisco.

Then the Clovers took over. Interestingly, this is anticipated in movies, too. Watch some old Dirt Harry flicks and see for yourself. These movies were also set in San Francisco. It would be absurd to set any movies like these in California today. Which brings us back to Leno's Law. If it has been passed, it would have exempted 35-year-old (and older) vehicles on a rolling basis from the state's obnoxious emissions testing requirements because (a) there are so few of them still in operation at this point and (b) by dint of that, whatever their "emissions" are, they are an irrelevance at this point. This latter assumes that the point of the emissions testing is to keep the air clear rather than punish owners of antique vehicles by making it difficult to legally drive them.

The current situation in California is that every vehicle made since 1976 – which is almost 50 years ago – must pass "smog check" every two years and every time the title changes hands in order to be legal to drive on the government's roads. (It is important to use the right words; there are no "public" roads. If there were, then the government would not be in control of them.)

There is no rolling exemption from smog check. Not ever. A vehicle made in 1976 will still have to pass smog check when it is 75 years old – 100 years old –  unless the law changes, which isn't likely to given the whole point is to de facto illegalize old vehicles without actually illegalizing them. You can hold on to your old car; but you can't use it (on the government's roads) unless it passes "smog check" every two years. This gets more difficult to do as the years – as the decades – pass because it is often the case that key components of the factory emissions control system are no longer available. Replacements must be approved by the California Air Resources Board but that does not mean replacement parts are available. It may not be worth making them for a vehicle that is 35 –  or 50 – years old.