L.A. Times: All old cars are dirty, need to be crushed

I’ve received a few emails about a recent L.A. Times story that’s been making the rounds with a quote from YT in it, defending the 25-year exemption inserted into the federal cash for clunkers program, thanks to SEMA’s lobbying efforts. For the story, Ralph Vartabedian and Ken Bensinger rounded up a bunch of folks who thought their VW Beetles should qualify for cash for clunkers and used those stories to question the 25-year exemption.

Aside from the libertarian who claims that destroying older vehicles immediately results in increased values for the remaining vehicles (attrition-induced rarity != valuable, as any Vega owner can attest), the authors also support limitless crushing of old cars with some dubious-sounding stats from the California Air Resources Board that claim a 1965 Chevrolet Malibu produces 400 times the smog-forming pollutants of a 2010 Malibu.

Apparently, neither Vartabedian, Bensinger nor the CARB guy quoted recall the news from just a few years ago that Arizona’s Department of Environmental Quality exempted even 15-year-old collector cars from smog testing because they produced a “negligible impact” on air-quality standards. Oh, and the federal EPA backed the AZDEQ on the ruling. Oh, and you can read the study here.

Which study is superior? Leave that for the environerds to hash out. Besides, anybody who’s watched C4C unfold knows a) that the program’s main purpose was never environmental (and if it was, there’s good reasons to argue that it failed), and b) there are plenty of other arguments for keeping 25-year-and-older cars out of the program, among them the financial impact on the multi-billion-dollar aftermarket. Vartabedian and Bensinger didn’t seem at all eager to address those other arguments.

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