The Cars California Just Made Collectible Again

For 21 years, California's collector-car world has had an invisible border running straight through 1975.

Cars built before it lived in one world. Cars built after it lived in another. A 1975 model could be restored, registered and driven without a single smog inspection. A nearly identical 1976 model stayed tied to the state's emissions-testing program for the rest of its life, every two years and every time it changed hands.

That one model year shaped which cars Californians saved, which ones they sold out of state and, occasionally, which ones they simply gave up on.

On September 16, in Jay Leno's garage in Burbank, Gov. Gavin Newsom moved the border.

What the law actually says

Senate Bill 1392, better known as Jay Leno's Law, creates a phased smog-check exemption for qualifying collector vehicles from the 1976 through 1985 model years. It starts on January 1, 2028, with cars built before the 1981 model year, then adds one model year every January until pre-1986 cars are covered in 2033. It was jointly authored by state Sens. Dave Cortese, a San Jose Democrat, and Shannon Grove, a Bakersfield Republican, and sponsored by SEMA, the aftermarket industry's trade association. Cortese's summary of the people it serves was blunt: classic car owners "are not daily commuters — they are preservationists."

Qualifying is the part people will get wrong. This is not a blanket pass for every old car in the state. A vehicle must meet the new legal definition of a collector motor vehicle: at least 35 model years old, and either insured as a collector vehicle or driven fewer than 1,000 miles a year. The Bureau of Automotive Repair still has to write the regulations that turn that definition into paperwork. Where the exemption applies, it removes the smog certificate at initial registration, at the biennial renewal and at transfer of ownership. That last one is the quiet win: the sale is where many of these cars have historically gotten stuck.

The line used to move

Here is the part most coverage skipped: this is not the first time California let old cars age out of the smog check. It is the second.

In 1997, the Legislature passed SB 42, which created a 30-year rolling exemption. A car simply graduated from the program once it turned 30. It did not last. The Department of Consumer Affairs had opposed it from the start, arguing that the small number of cars it freed accounted for a significant share of the fleet's smog-test failures, and the California Air Resources Board warned it would make federal air-quality targets harder to reach in places like the Los Angeles basin. In 2004, AB 2683 repealed the rolling exemption and froze the cutoff at the 1975 model year, effective April 1, 2005.

And there it stayed. Three attempts to move it failed: SB 1239 in 2016 died on the Senate floor, AB 467 in 2022 never left committee, and SB 712 in 2025 was held in the Assembly's appropriations committee. SB 1392 is the fourth try in a decade, and the first to reach the governor's desk. It passed the Senate 29–5.

That history explains the shape of the new law. Every lesson from 2004 is built into it: it is narrow, it is limited to collector cars, and it stops. After 2033, nothing else rolls in. The legislative record says so explicitly: it does not create a permanent rolling exemption.

Why a smog check on a 1980 car is not an errand

For a modern car, a smog check takes 20 minutes and a credit card. For a low-production car from 1980, it can turn into archaeology.

The car may need a model-specific air pump, thermal reactor, catalytic converter or vacuum-control part that disappeared from dealer shelves decades ago. A car can run cleanly and reliably and still fail the visual inspection because one original component is missing, substituted or no longer identifiable. Then there is the test itself. Cars this old need stations with BAR-97 equipment, which is expensive to maintain and rarely used, so fewer and fewer stations keep it. SEMA told legislators that a BAR-97 inspection can cost more than $200, before a single repair.

That burden distorts the market in predictable ways. Buyers avoid otherwise appealing cars because registration looks uncertain. Owners sell them to other states. Restorations stall because the correct emissions hardware costs more than the car is worth. Meanwhile, the pre-1976 version of essentially the same model commands a premium simply because it is easier to own. A 1975 Porsche 911 and a 1976 one are nearly the same car. In California, they have been two different propositions for 21 years.

A 1975 Porsche 911 and a 1976 one are nearly the same car. In California, they have been two different propositions for 21 years.

The cars that stand to gain the most

The biggest winners may not be the blue-chip cars. A rare Ferrari or an early 911 Turbo already has enough value to justify difficult repairs and careful compliance. The more interesting group sits a rung below: cars valuable enough to preserve, but not valuable enough to support an unlimited restoration budget.

These are not merely old cars waiting for regulatory mercy. They are the bridge between chrome-bumper classics and the modern performance car. Fuel injection spread in these years, turbocharging came back, electronic engine controls improved and aerodynamics got serious. The 1976–85 window is routinely dismissed as the Malaise Era, and the description is not entirely unfair: low compression, early emissions equipment and horsepower figures that would embarrass a modern economy car. It is also incomplete. This is where the modern car was born.

California matters here beyond its own borders. Dry weather preserves sheet metal, and the state has an enormous concentration of collectors, specialists, auction houses and car culture. If qualifying 1976–85 cars become easier to keep and to sell, demand may strengthen. Not necessarily through speculation, but because more people will be willing to own them. A healthy collector market is not simply one in which prices rise. It is one in which cars are used, repaired, documented and passed to the next owner rather than parked indefinitely because the paperwork became harder than the restoration.

The case against

Leno's Law had serious opponents, and their argument deserves a fair hearing. The American Lung Association, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and more than a dozen other groups opposed it.

Their case rests on the numbers. More than 21 million Californians live in areas that exceed federal ozone standards, and vehicles produce roughly 80% of the state's smog-forming nitrogen oxide emissions. According to the Air Resources Board, a 1982 car that passes its smog check today still emits about 123 times the nitrogen oxides of a new 2025 model. The state's air-pollution officers also argued that the new definition of a collector car is looser than the old one: it no longer requires a car to be unaltered from factory specification, so a 35-year-old car with tampered emissions equipment and a collector insurance policy could skip the inspection that would catch it. Coming as federal rollbacks have already left the state short on emissions reductions, they called the bill "a self-inflicted impediment to California's clean air goals."

The supporters' answer is about scale and use, not chemistry. Qualifying cars make up well under 1% of the vehicles on California's roads, by the authors' count, and the bill's own terms keep them rare: collector insurance policies typically restrict daily use, and the alternative route caps mileage at 1,000 a year. A preserved 45-year-old car driven to shows and Sunday breakfasts is not the same thing as a worn-out commuter covering 20,000 miles a year. Both of those facts are true at once. That is why the law is narrow.

What it does not do

Leno's Law removes an inspection. It does not remove the rules behind it. It does not authorize taking emissions equipment off a car, and it does not override federal law. Nothing changes before January 1, 2028.

There is also a practical problem hiding in the Legislature's own paperwork. The Senate Appropriations Committee noted that the DMV would need new IT systems to let owners certify a car as a collector vehicle, and staff warned the department would not be able to finish those changes by the law's start date. How collector status will be verified, how the 1,000-mile limit will be proven, and how modified or engine-swapped cars will be treated all depend on DMV and Bureau of Automotive Repair rules that do not exist yet.

The bottom line

Jay Leno's Law does not declare every 1980 sedan a collectible. It does not erase California's emissions law, and it will not rescue neglected cars by itself.

What it does is remove part of the regulatory wall that made one generation of cars disproportionately difficult to keep. For 21 years, California enthusiasts treated 1975 as if it were a mechanical dividing line. It never was. It was a legal one.

Now, slowly and with restrictions, the state is beginning to admit the difference. And somewhere beneath a dusty cover, a 928, an XJ-S, a W126 or an RX-7 may have just become worth saving.