Here’s a bummer of a leftover from our NorCal photo reel. This billboard for California’s Bureau of Automotive Repairs, DriveHealthy.com, was spotted in San Jose and features a clapped out Datto Sunny as an example of a polluter. It turns out that The Man will give low income drivers up to $500 towards a repair if their car fails a smog check or, scarily, $1000 toward “retiring” (read: scrapping) the offending vehicle. Poor little Datto.
UPDATE: More discussion in our forums here.
I saw that add all over socal when I went this past week.
I get an offer to buy my 510 from the government every time I register it. Yeah, over my dead body.
What a load of p00p.
Hot Rod did a really good article years ago about the retiring program, and how stupid it was. Most of the cars brought to be scrapped hadn’t been driven in years, or very infrequently. One man scrapped his first car, a ’50s Dodge, because “it’s the right thing to do”.
What a load of stupidity.
Hot rod bought a six cylinder ’68 Camaro that was going to be crushed, and to prove a point, they took it directly to an emissions station, which said it polluted within the parameters of a then brand new Camry.
Ugh. It’s the oil companies and other industries trying to point the finger elsewhere instead of handling their own pollution. What better than old cars? No one (besides now SEMA Action Network) protects the interests of people with old cars.
http://www.hotrod.com/projectbuild/1967_chevy_camaro_project_car/index.html
This was the article. I cringe every time I read it. In some pics, you can see old Japanese cars and trucks in the background, awaiting their pointless deaths.
Great article, Bob. Thanks for sharing it. I’d like to know how old that article is. At least they were able to rescue that Camaro. Japanese or not, it’s always sad to see an old car like that just scrapped.