anti-pollution when did it start

There has almost ALWAYS been laws concerning "excessive smoke and noise" and "adequate fenders and mud flaps" since "forever." It's just that many times "they let you by."

I can remember a boy in my home town, downtown at least twice a week you'd see some "smoker" dragging along dribbling blue smoke.

But during the 4x4 Big Tire craze of the late 60's/ 70's there were even some pickups and Jeeps that came illegal (inadequate mud flaps) from the FACTORY, under many state's laws.

There's even laws on how high/ low headlights can be.

So far as smog, "back then" when I was stationed in the San Diego area (down there 4 years) I got caught TWICE in a roadblock smog inspection.

The sixpack setup was removed, and I was running an Edelbrock/ 800 DP, headers, Mallory coil, dual point. Somewhere, I still have the ticket.

"Sir, you have aircraft landing lights installed in your high beams. You are going to have to remove them." (Look em up--- 4537s)

They got me for a Mallory coil, (part of the ignition), carb and intake, even though it ran cleaner than the sixpack, no "carb snorkel heat" EVEN THOUGH sixpacks never came with it, and no heat riser (headers). AND NO LICENSE PLATE LIGHT!!! And to add insult to injury, this was a Monday, and we had been to Carlsbad Sat. night. I had removed the "normal" exhaust system, which was a big H shaped system from the headers coming out sorta like a T/A. You could drop it right down and pull it out of the car. SO I just had some glasspacks on the headers. So they wrote me for "inadequate exhaust, no tail pipes."

The solution was to pay the bail on the ticket (there's probably STILL a bench warrent out down there) and ignore the rest.

The second time around was just after I'd scattered the sixpack engine, and had a "junker" in there. It WAS "dirty." So I bought a late model low miles 340 and put that in the car, then when my brother got killed up here, I came home on leave. Transferred the car to ID plates, so after that they couldn't screw with me so much.

The thing is, back then, people like Holley and Edelbrock were advertising that there products were "CARB" approved, but in fact they really were not. The inspectors at least did not care--they wrote you up, anyway.