If you read the whole thing through and you're familiar with west coast emissions laws, then this new power grab isn't so alarming. That is not to say that increased regulation is justified in this case, performance cars being a small percentage of traffic, but I doubt that it will affect anyone except those trying to use race cars with modified engines on the street. I figure it would affect auto crossers, drifters, and drag racers the most. I've been working in road racing for a long time and honestly, the spec racing classes don't really use a lot of engine modifications, and Spec Miatas, E30's, and others can actually pass smog if catted and tuned. Formula cars, sports cars, stock cars, and other fully committed race cars don't really use any parts regulated by CARB since it's not required, your registration is with your racing sanctioning body, which is primarily concerned with the safety, track worthiness, and sound limit of your car.
Like I said, CA smog laws are basically the same as this new one that they would like to apply nationwide. It will basically make it so you can't install non CARB approved parts on street registered cars. It really won't affect trailered race cars at all, only cars that are kept "street legal" to be driven to the racetrack, and street racers looking to make more HP with forced induction, or NA with revs, compression increase (NOX), and cams (HC, CO). You can still maintain smog legal status with approved kits that keep EGR and all the other originally equipped emissions components. There are smog legal turbo and supercharger kits, the downside being that the cost to get kits certified makes them really expensive. NA tuning can be done within reason, you can still have a clean running high performance engine with modern fuel injection. You just can't go too far which makes lots of NOX and unburnt mixture come out the exhaust. Driving a dirty smoke belching (untuned) race car on the would be unpleasant anyways, the exhaust fumes which blow back in the car can be deadly in really bad cases.
Living in CA and being a car enthusiast has led me to learn a lot about the mechanics and law around emissions testing. For the street, I've learned to avoid Smog test nightmares by choosing cars that are fun in stock form and just keeping them tuned well enough to pass. It kinda sucks, I sold a car that I love recently because smogging it has been such a pain since it is a grey market German car that was never meant to pass CA criteria pollutant levels. I sold it to a friend who had the time to tune it to a fine degree in order to pass the test. With the money I picked up a newer car with OBD2 so it's easier to diagnose all the emissions components. The good trade off is that CA smog forces you to keep your car in good tune, which is good for the engine and the driving experience. It's unfortunate when you need an expensive item to pass the test, like a new catalytic converter, but after a certain dollar amount the state can provide assistance with repair costs. Some people like to run without a cat, I don't because the exhaust smells awful from a straight pipe four stroke car. Some engines are exceptionally raspy like high revving four valve engines, and they can kill cats from vibrations quickly, those cars sometimes need a test pipe or an expensive metallic substrate catalytic converter.
In the end it's worth it, but it can be pure **** when you're caught between a rock and a hard place trying to smog a daily driven 1976+ tuner car. It would be nice to live in a world where people would be trusted to take it as their personal responsibility to keep their machines tuned, and not forced to comply.
