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In states such as California that have very stringent smog-emssion laws prompted me to wonder how Packards figure into the mix. Are they exempted from compliance?

Hope the forum members have a blessed and bountiful Thanksgiving!
Garrett Meadows

In California Packards are exempt from regulations and emissions such as NOX and CO etc which are caught by smog inspections cars made model year 1975 and after have to endure every other year.

Packards are subject to gross polluting laws such as excessive smoke from the exhaust pipe or running down the road with enough raw gas smell coming out that the following car can run on the fumes. Those two infractions can be caught by infrared sensors at some freeway access ramps and, if a car is offending it can be turned in by a complaint to a local pollution control or air quality district from a concerned citizen. Once a complaint is received the owner is invited to bring the car in to an inspection center for testing. If the complaint is found valid, an order is given to fix the problem and come back for another inspection or else retire the car. Registration is suspended until a proof of repair is submitted to DMV.

Ironically, California is considered by many to be a car loving state but as far as the various pollution boards are concerned anything that emits any kind of pollutant is a public enemy. Just look to the clunker bill which passed the legislature a few years ago where multitudes of perfectly good Detroit cars were "retired" by rendering their engines permanently inoperable. The vast majority of those cars met the crusher and are now coming back as finished steel or maybe your favorite Asian brand.

If you go to places like Watts nobody there complies with the laws. And California is running out of water so their status will be moot in a few years. I'm looking forward to the coming real estate crash in California. "Cash for Clunkers" was a program designed by the President to discriminate against the poor. Those cars could have been handed over to the poor.

At least what we have coming in January is more honest. Working class is on Wall Street and everybody else is the loser class. No promises have been made to help the loser class.

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Not all the state. The areas most affected with drought are parts where three quarters of the people live as well as the central valley where a considerable amount of the nations fresh produce and almost all almonds and pistachios are grown. Not to worry though. The far Northern area where most of the refugees from the hippie culture are contentedly growing their pot gardens is safe. At the moment they have all the water they could ever need so the pot supply is secure. Other produce can and is being brought in from Mexico and Central America. Almonds are good because their water was mostly diverted from that meant for cities and other crops. Pistachio nuts, I do not know. I think Iran is the other major world supplier so those could start to be in short supply.

I don't know about a real estate crash. So far prices have not fallen terribly. In the places it did, most has even rebounded to virtually the same as before the economic downturn. The Golden State has lost some luster so we did lose population over the last 10 years but for the most part those leaving were not property owners. It seems despite all the problems we still have more people with money wanting to buy than the amount of property available. As long as the Coastal Commission restricts development along the coast and local land use boards control the rest, salable property will be in short supply. Of course, the coming earthquake might drop all that prime coast real estate into the ocean and flatten the rest of the state. That might put a damper on things.

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In one sense, California has always been running out of water. That's because much of the state is built on top of a desert. Some people who live there know this fact. Some people who don't... apparently don't. There are also those who naively seem to think that all of California is Southern California... when in fact the state is bigger than many countries and has numerous different types of topography and climates. And you can't support a steady stream of millions and millions of people arriving without the fresh water becoming an increasingly scarce commodity. And heaven help us if we mention global warming, huh~~~~? That doesn't exist, right? However, the operative term here is "fresh water." If you look on a map, that huge blue thing to the left of the state is not just ink... it happens to be the Pacific Ocean. And I can assure you-even if you never saw it, swam in it, flew over it or rode on it (and I have done all four) it is a lot of very liquid water. And there is this technology called "desalinization"... which you might want to look into before declaring the "real estate crash in California" due to no water. The same water situation exists outside of California. Had a look at the water level in Arizona/Nevada Lake Mead and Hoover Dam lately? Last I heard/saw it is about 25 feet left until the turbines have to shut down and what will that do to Las Vegas with all of the neon lights glowing and toilets flushing in those thousands of hotel rooms? And let's not forget, since we're getting political diarrhea here and ignoring realities... the California San Joaquin Valley grows a huge portion of American vegetables, grains and fruits. Look it up. They've been fighting over water there since forever.

Making an extreme statement like "nobody complies with the laws in places like Watts" is like saying the world is flat and every household should own an M-60. There are certainly people there breaking the law in Watts... but there are also people in Beverly Hills breaking laws too. This kind of talk has no place in a Packard forum.

The California DMV, CHP and LAPD certainly enforce smog laws... no matter where one happens to live in Californa. IF your car falls under the smog laws, you cannot get it licensed if you don't have a smog compliance certificate or some other compliance... and that law still counts if you live in Watts. So let's not say such fiction as if it is fact.

If we have to resort to fiction and California and water and Packards, then go get a DVD of my favorite movie about Los Angeles. It was called Chinatown. But it was based on a lot of facts, too. And yes, one of the central themes of the movie was all about water... and if you insist, politics too. And this was in the 1930s. So much for fiction and facts.

As for Packards, they are all too old to be affected by the normal smog laws of California. So for the most part, it is a moot point. Of course if one is labeled as a gross polluter and driving around leaving a blue cloud behind your car, yes, you are going to be ticketed and possibly even impounded. And this applies whether you are driving a new Honda or an old Packard. It also applies whether you are doing so in Watts or Malibu Beach. Saying otherwise is just ignorance.

And while I have never lived in Watts, I HAVE lived in Bel Air and Westwood Village...two very creme-de-la-creme upscale areas of Los Angeles. Out of all the places I have ever lived... where is the only one where I had one of my cars stolen right off of the street? Bel Air. And I can assure you, Johnny Carson's wife-who lived just up the street from me- was robbed in broad daylight. I know-I chased the guy down who robbed her. And he WASN'T from Watts. And this was in the 1970s, so it can't be blamed on Washington or the present President. So. Let's leave this kind of absurd rubbish and inflammatory talk out of this Packard discussion.

Leeedy, well said. This site is for Packards not politics.

(o[]o)

HH56, as always, well and carefully explains, and amen, JW. Thank you, Leeedy for the breath of fresh air of your reasoning, overview.
To those still droning on about "tree-huggers," last time i checked, trees put oxygen we and our cars need back in the air, and car buffs Paul Newman, James Garner, Andy Griffith, and the late Hemmings Motor News publisher Terry Ehrich were outspoken Democrats.
Today's crusher laws go back to Bush, Sr. who saw how the Japanese auto industry was helped by a national law retiring perfectly good cars at 60,000 miles, which accounts for the supply here in the US of Japanese auto engines with plenty of life left in them for reasonable price.

So thanks again, Leeedy, for steering us back to fact. Most of us have friends from across the political spectrum.
To those wanting to whine and parrot down home politik on this forum -- of all places -- railing against "thuh politicans" and "thuh government," any US citizen can become a candidate. Like the man said, "If you don't like the news, make some of your own."

Meanwhile, back in Packardom, some of us here on PI are still waiting for someone to unearth SAE or other vetted papers contrasting the Cad 346/Buick 320/Packard 356;

comparing Saf-T-fleX ifs with the GM type;

the Pierce-Arrow V-12 against the Packard Twelve (i give the slight nod to the Pierce engine, while Packard had the more modern chassis, other than lacking the final generation P-A's standard overdrive);

comparing/contrasting the concurrent Chrysler/Packard/Pierce nine-main, 384-ci inline eights.

Excerpt from the Oregon Packards newsletter 1974:

Between tours a few red-hots marched our Packards down to the Department of Environmental Quality's Emission Control Center for a test-in. We don't take Fred Mauck's editorials lightly. (Poster's note: Fred had written something in PI magazine about how straight 8 engines, because they run at lower RPMs, burn fuel more completely...someone more technically knowledgeable may remember exactly what the the details were.) We liked the idea of sharing the news of how our old Packard engines meet and beat even the 1974 emission standards without controls. So, we called the NBC affiliate here, KGW-TV, and John Tuttle, fearless news-feature personality, met us there and filmed our whole program. KGW ran the feature on August 7 and 8th. Of all the people to interview, Tuttle settled on Vaughn Hickman whose recently arrived '48 beat the '74 standards. Vaughn machine-gunned so much information in two minutes that the engineers were forced to slow the tape down for the viewing audience. The kicker of the event was the newscar, a '71 Brand X loaded with controls, which flunked the '74 standards.

I think GM's inline 6 meets emission standards without controls, but not sure if that's because it can idle at lower speeds than V6s.

On a tip from our club mentor, George C., I've been adding 4 oz of automatic transmission fluid to the regular gas I buy. I have stainless valve seats, but the tranny fluid helps to lubricate the valves. If you pour a cup directly into the carburetor, you'll get a lot of white smoke. Notify your neighbors ahead of time.