Though I like to keep all my subjects in a “lane,” so to speak, it’s difficult not to bring up subjects of principle when discussing topics in the automotive world. I say “principle” because many automotive subjects quickly delve into legal matters—liability issues, socioeconomic issues, safety issues, environmental issues, and, of course, political issues.
California has the worst of every world when it comes to laws and regulations. The recent fires here in Southern California not only unmasked the outright deficiencies of state and local bureaucracies but also provided a newfound understanding of the incompetence of California’s state and local governance. It’s so bad that a statement like that isn’t even political at this point—it’s almost just an undisputed fact.
When it comes to cars, California has one of the richest histories of car building, not to mention legendary street racing tracks and unauthorized actual street racing locations. The reasons for this stem from a number of factors. Better weather means more “outdoor” time, which leads to more time to get curious. (Anyone who’s ever worked on a car in less than 30º temperatures knows that it is not enjoyable. Wrapping your knuckles with cold hands is a form of torture that would probably be illegal in the worst of ghoulish tyrannies.)
California’s great weather possibly allows for more free time. In the pre-1970s era, the long, lonely highways and vast stretches of newly paved roads between cities allowed groups of people to test their builds against one another without much, if any, interruption from the police. And, of course, there was the natural curiosity of teenagers and young adults alike, who had zero regulations or safety standards stopping them from testing their engine builds—often using scraps found in local junkyards and the ample amount of machine shop equipment in school shop classes and local machine shops.
A testament to these earlier times was the Wright brothers’ first engine 50–60 years prior to this California race era. Two brothers, who were bicycle retailers, wanted to build an engine for their flying machine. Somehow, the best and most cost-effective way to do that back then was to mill an engine block out of a solid piece of aluminum.
That sentence alone required the existence of machines capable of doing that, the availability of aluminum at a cost two bicycle salesmen could afford, and the ability to make or source pistons, pushrods, an engine block, a crankshaft, main bearings, a fuel system, and a water-cooled cooling system. (The list of complementary components needed to make this work is much longer.)
The point is that these two bicycle shop owners (along with Charlie Taylor) built a custom engine from raw metals—on the salary of their bike shop.
Fast forward to the post-war 1950s, and you had a generation of people with military experience working on the latest innovations in combustion engines, the rise of trade schools, and a booming economy. This created a generation of curiosity without ceilings. Meaning, if you could build it, you could drive it.
You didn’t have the modern liabilities of lawsuits and government dictates telling people what they could or couldn’t do. Instead, you had an American culture that learned by doing—word-of-mouth experiments fueled by rumors and junkyard finds that made people wonder what might be possible with these engines.
From 1900, with the Wright brothers, to the 1950s and into the 1960s, machining quality and metal alloys improved. Engines became more efficient and ran with higher compression. These advances, built on the backs of curious kids looking for glory, created a generation of geniuses—many of whom are now dying off, silenced, with no one to pass down their knowledge.
Meanwhile, in California, the laws are so stringent that an aftermarket performance air filter is considered a “modification” and is technically illegal. The state doubles down on this nonsense with visual inspections during the biennial smog check. What this means in practice is that you could build an engine that emits nothing but pure steam—ZERO emissions—but if it doesn’t have the government-approved equipment, your car will fail the test and be reported. (And yes, smog stations in California report directly to the DMV. Fail once? It’s recorded. Fail twice? You’re officially on their watch list.) Obviously, someone took lessons from the East German Stasi.
California’s laws have created a “black market” world in the auto industry—run by cash deals and “look the other way” agreements. Or, if you prefer the legal route, you can go to a state-controlled referee who will charge you between $10,000 and $20,000 to slap a sticker on it and magically make it “legal.” (Yes, I have contempt for this racket.)
A few years back, a buddy of mine built a Rover engine that made 365 lb-ft of torque at 3,600 RPM (producing 352 HP) with a fairly wide powerband. (How he did that is another post.) But here’s the noteworthy part: We put it in an old Range Rover and wanted to see if it would pass smog. Not only did it run cleaner than the stock 3.9L engine was supposed to, but it also increased the torque by over 100 lb-ft.
...But wait, there’s more.
We tested that engine on the street using an older software called “Rover Gauge” and realized it was running super lean—meaning it wasn’t even as efficient as it could be. A few weeks later, after going through everything, I found that the number five cylinder had a bad connection to the injector. Meaning? It was running on SEVEN cylinders the whole time. The engine was so smooth and put out so much power that we didn’t even notice a dead cylinder. We fixed that and were blown away. More power than an LS, with a Rover engine.
That Rover had so much power that my biggest issue was how squirrely it got when you put your foot into it. Going 65 mph on the freeway, if you stepped on it, it would chirp the tires and slam you into your seat.
Today, so much has been robbed from the youthful and the curious. Many innovations in today’s automotive market are simply finding ways to get around the bureaucracy.
There’s an old saying: “A law must be respectable to be respected.”
When more and more cars in California have Montana plates… when referee fees keep going up because there’s no alternative… when your 1976 vehicle has to meet 2025 emissions standards… you’re not making the world cleaner or better. You’re just making honest people dishonest—moving goalposts to appease blanket laws that sound flowery and sunny in political speeches but kill curiosity and innovation.
The automotive world has been going through a renaissance for the last 10 years. And if bureaucrats got out of the way, we’d see a new era of prosperity.