>Bill Brewer wrote:
>
>> A co-worker is telling me that in England they made it so you can only
>> drive your classic pre-smog control sports car on weekends and holidays. I
>> don't think so. Can someone familiar with English smog laws fill me in?
>> We are grumbling about Dean Flores new state bill.
This information is what we call here "a load of b*ll*cks". Our Government
would like to tax all forms of enjoyment - and to a large degree it has
succeeded in doing so - but their onslaught on old cars has been pretty mild so
far
We're lucky in having a very strong pro-car lobby in the House of Lords and -
to some degree - in the Commons so, despite successive Ministers of Transport
who are car-haters, anti-car legislation has been limited
There's no specific anti-old-car legislation at all and Smog control for cars
is limited to an exhaust emission test for most cars, with a "No visible smoke"
test for earlier vehicles. This is part of the annual DOT (aka MOT) test. Sorry
I don't know the cut-off date when it changes to the visual test, but my 1962
TR4 qualifies
Pre-1974 cars pay no Vehicle Excise Duty (Car Tax). This is around $250 per
annum for all other cars, whether driven or not. You can, however, register any
car as being off the road (SORN - Statuatory Off Road Notification) and pay no
tax, but cars with SORN can't be used or stored on the Public Highway. This
pre-1974 tax exemption was introduced by one Government as a annual rolling
exemption, but the bean-counters in a later Government did the sums, repealed
it and froze the exemption at 1974
Leaded (Four Star) petrol is still available, at a price, at a small number of
garages but is due to disappear this year due to lack of demand. There's still
widespread misinformation about leaded and unleaded fuels, valve seat recession
& etc and many cars have probably been scrapped as a result
Despite this, we have an unrivalled range of vintage, veteran, classic and
later vehicles of all kinds here in the UK. At the recent VSCC Pomeroy Trophy
the oldest car competing was built in 1907 - and the newest was 2002!
Probably the biggest disincentives to using old cars here are the state of the
roads, the amount of traffic, the dearth of car breakers yards (dismantlers)
who carry parts for old cars - and the cost of petrol. It's around 80p/litre -
or $5.66 per Imperial gallon
Of course I did say that the Government's onslaught on old cars has been pretty
mild so far. But did I mention that more than 80% of the cost of a gallon of
petrol here is tax?
Nick Froome
http://www.bolide.co.uk
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