It’s an amazing thing, the Internet. With it, you can look for parts that you need to finish (or start) your current Corvette project, or shop for your next project, or keep in touch with fellow Vette lovers that you’ve met up with in your travels to Corvette-related shows and other events across the country. You can do all that in the time it takes to enjoy a cup of coffee and a doughnut, while sipping your cup of Joe and making sure that the jelly-filled that you’re eating doesn’t erupt, leaving your keyboard and screen all sticky.

Recently, a lot of car and truck enthusiasts have been busy sending off messages, posting comments on bulletin boards and otherwise getting out the word about a piece of state legislation in California that would have had serious consequences to the car and truck hobby in general, and pre-’76 vehicles registered there in particular.

That bill, California Senate Bill 1549, authored by State Senator Dean Florez, would have required anyone who bought a pre-’76 car or truck in eight counties of California’s Central Valley (San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Merced, Madera, Fresno, Kings, Tulare and part of Kern)  to subject it to emissions tests for the life of the vehicle. That’s despite existing California law that exempts all pre-‘76s from the state’s Smog Check program.

And, per the SEMA Action Network, other reasons why this was a bad bill included:

-California’s current emissions testing exemption recognizes the minimal impact of pre-1976 motor vehicles on emissions and air quality.

-Pre-1976 vehicles constitute a small and shrinking portion of the overall vehicle population in California (thanks in part to folks in the other 49 states who buy them and haul them home to work on), and are a poor source from which to look for further emissions reductions.

-Pre-1976 antique and classic vehicles are overwhelmingly well-maintained.

-Repealing the exemption in the Valley could lead the Legislature—or the non-elected Air Resources Board--to target other areas in the state in the future, if not the entire state.

-Legislators and regulators are again feeling the heat from a failed effort to meet air quality goals, and are looking for a convenient scapegoat.  The old car hobby should not carry the burden of their mistakes, as it has in previous amendments to the old car exemption (which used to be a rolling 30-year one…if a car turned 30 years old, it was exempt—but not any more.)  

This bill had been scheduled for hearings twice in April, but each time the hearings were cancelled at the request of the bill’s author. Just a couple of days ago, I checked that bill’s status on the California Legislature’s website—and found that the emissions-related language had been stripped from it.

There’s probably a very good reason why that happened, and I’m checking with my sources in California as to what exactly happened and why. I’m figuring that enough people e-mailed their comments in opposition to this bill to their state lawmakers, as well as to the committee members who would have heard it—not to mention the bill’s author—that their e-mail servers got full in a hurry and stayed that way. That is, if the volume of e-mails on this bill didn’t force a crash of the entire e-mail system at the California State Capitol. It’s also likely that the phone and fax lines at the Capitol got a similar workout too, much to the dismay of the legislative staffers who took the barrage of calls and dealt with the blizzard of faxes.

So, why would this interest you if you don’t live in California? Because a number of other states want to follow California’s example on environmental issues. If those states want to see how “The Golden State” handles a critical environmental issue, maybe they should look at how it supplies water to all its residents—and how that critical resource is in danger of being cut off. I could go on for a month here, but the bottom line is California’s environmental authorities appear to be doing such a good job managing the state’s water supply that they make the technique of restoring a Corvette body by slathering Bondo over beer cartons appear to be a good job, too. I say that as a former resident of the “Delta,” where water for about two-thirds of California’s residents flows through, protected by fragile, hundred-year-old earthen levees while so much is pumped out that several species of native fish face extinction as a result.

Stopping legislation that would cripple or kill the car and truck hobby outright is something that everyone who as much as dreams about owning a Corvette should be involved with. And, thanks to the Internet, it’s never been easier to track potentially harmful legislation, as well as to make your fellow enthusiasts aware of it and motivate them to take whatever action they can to stop it.  

And that’s sort of like driving an LS7-powered Corvette home while eating a jelly-filled doughnut, and arriving with a clean shirt and windshield.