Virginia House Bill 288 regarding antique cars

[Mike Hughes]

Virginia House Bill 288 was recently introduced into the Virginia state legislature. This bill will severely restrict the driving enjoyment of any collector vehicle registered as an antique (25 years old or older). Please check out the Legislative News page on the Custom Cruisers of Northern Virginia web site at:


http://www.customcruisersnova.org/Legislative%20News.htm

<http://www.customcruisersnova.org/Legislative%20News.htm>


for more information on this bill and what you can do to register your opposition. Please contact your state delegate and senator and urge them to vote against this bill.

To those who live outside of Virginia:  It might be wise to check your state legislature web-site from time to time to make sure similar such legislation does not slip in unnoticed!




- Mike Hughes  -ô¿ô-
  1966 230SL Auto P/S
  Havanna Brown (408)
  Light Beige (181)
  Cream M-B Tex (121)

[Chad]

Mike:

I have my older cars safety inspected every year anyway, just figured most states still required it too.  Is there anything else about this legislation in Va than safety inspection?

quote:Originally posted by Mike Hughes

Virginia House Bill 288 was recently introduced into the Virginia state legislature. This bill will severely restrict the driving enjoyment of any collector vehicle registered as an antique (25 years old or older). Please check out the Legislative News page on the Custom Cruisers of Northern Virginia web site at:


http://www.customcruisersnova.org/Legislative%20News.htm

<http://www.customcruisersnova.org/Legislative%20News.htm>


for more information on this bill and what you can do to register your opposition. Please contact your state delegate and senator and urge them to vote against this bill.

To those who live outside of Virginia:  It might be wise to check your state legislature web-site from time to time to make sure similar such legislation does not slip in unnoticed!




- Mike Hughes  -ô¿ô-
  1966 230SL Auto P/S
  Havanna Brown (408)
  Light Beige (181)
  Cream M-B Tex (121)

[Cees Klumper]

In the Netherlands, all cars older than (something like) 3 or 4 years have to be annually inspected for safety and emissions! Really crazy, since modern cars hold up for quite a bit longer than that, but there you have it. There has been repeated talk about lowering the requirement for cars older than 25 years, since they on average don't get driven nearly as much as new cars, and typically are very well cared for, but that has not made it yet - so each year, my car is safety and emissions-inspected.

Cees ("Case") Klumper in Amsterdam
'69 white 280 SL automatic

[Mike Hughes]

Yes.  Currently one is allowed to drive one's antique vehicle for pleasure use within a 250 mile radius of home - this would be reduced to 50 miles.  Thus I would no longer be able to drive my antique cars from my home in Alexandria to my country home in Hightown, 215 miles away.  There are additional restrictions placed on driving such vehicles, including an absolute prohibition on taking the vehicle to work.

The real landmine buried in the proposed legislation is in the form of additional restrictions on what plates from the year of manufacture of the vehicle can be used to register the vehicle as an antique.  This would become rather a problem for many of us since Virginia routinely reissued tags every year using the same numbers for decades.  So it is conceivable that someone could have a 1954 car registered as an antique using plate number 123-456 issued in 1954.  Somebody else could have a 1967 car also registered as an antique using plate number 123-456, but issued in 1967. The proposed legislation would only allow the first antique registration application for plate number 123-456 to stand.  Theoretically there could be 70 cars, one from each year from 1906s until 1975, all registered using the same number!  There is a thriving market for two, three, and four-digit "reserved" plates in Virginia, which are quite desirable.  For instance, I paid hundreds of dollars for the "401" and "2083" plates that I have on my 1954 M.G. TF and 1966 230SL back in the early 80's when Virginia first started allowing one to use plates from the year of the car's manufacture for antique registration.  They are worth considerably more today.  The legislation does not address the thousands of vehicles already so registered!  Conceivably, if this legislation were to pass, not only would my plates become worthless, but they would also become useless for anything except garage wall decoration, since I was not the first person to register a car as an antique with either of those numbers!  I would have to go out and buy new pairs of plates for all my antique cars - and even then it would be a crap-shoot as to whether those tags could actually be used since someone else could have previously registered a different year car with the same number!

For full text see:

http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?061+ful+HB288

http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?061+ful+HB288+pdf

Download Attachment: Wheels.JPG
79.8 KB

Download Attachment: TF 401.jpg
78.97 KB

- Mike Hughes  -ô¿ô-
  1966 230SL Auto P/S
  Havanna Brown (408)
  Light Beige (181)
  Cream M-B Tex (121)

[Mike Hughes]

Update:  The bill is dead.  It was killed in committee yesterday.

- Mike Hughes  -ô¿ô-
  1966 230SL Auto P/S
  Havanna Brown (408)
  Light Beige (181)
  Cream M-B Tex (121)

[Chad]

Hummm, there must be more important stuff for government to worry about than vintage cars.

[Kenneth Gear]

For those that are interested in this type of legislation  I have two suggestions.

One, register for SEMA's Action Network at:
http://www.semasan.com/main/main.aspx?ID=/content/SEMASANcom/HomePage

They publish a regular newsletter on legislation in the a states and congress.  

Second, Hagerty Insurance is also compiling a similar network available at:

http://www.hagerty.com/hpnpublic/news_advocacy.aspx?z=&archives=

Nothing motivates legislators more than calls from "real people" in their district.  They hear from professional lobbyists (like myself) all the time, but a few calls from voters matters a lot.

Ken G
1971 280 SL
Silver/red