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c h a p t e r n i n e “฀THIS฀DREaDFUl฀฀ CONSPIRaCy,”฀฀ 1966–1984 Long before the passage of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act in 1966, tentative measures to combat urban air pollution through the regulation of automobile emissions had already emerged at the local and federal levels. Pioneered in California, most of these new regulations targeted the products of the OEMs exclusively, at least at first. But in the mid-1960s, some began to seek to curtail or even to altogether ban performance-oriented engine modifications in order to achieve the greater good of cleaner air. For an industry based on the manufacture and sale of high-performance parts and accessories, this was an alarming development. Through SEMA, the speed equipment industry therefore launched a passionate rhetorical, technological, and legal battle to defend hot rodding—to prevent the government from “sealing the hoods” of America’s cars. This effort was broadly similar to SEMA’s contemporaneous engagement with matters relating to automotive safety and noise, for through it all, SEMA rarely lost sight of its commitment to cooperation, compliance, and level-headed negotiation . However, in their efforts to prevent the legal prohibition of performanceoriented engine modifications, the leaders of the speed equipment industry found that ordinary rodders were inconsequential at best and an outright liability at worst. Throughout the 1960s, the 70s, and into the early 80s, SEMA therefore dealt with environmental regulations and environmental regulators largely on its own. The story of how it did so begins in downtown Los Angeles on a hazy summer day when gasoline cost thirty-six cents a gallon, the American-made V8 was the undisputed king of the highway, and a thick blanket of photochemical smog obscured the skyline. It was 1966. “ t h i s d r e a d f u l c o n s p i r a c y ,” 1 9 6 6 – 1 9 8 4 183 california action and federal inaction, 1966–1970 That day, Eric Grant and Miles Brubacher of the California Motor Vehicle Pollution Control Board (MVPCB) called together a small group of journalists and hot rod industrialists to explain an addition to the state’s motor vehicle code, Section 27156. After a brief introduction, they told their assembled guests that this new law prohibited the advertising, sale, and installation of any “add-on . . . or modified part which adversely affects the emissions performance of any emissions -related component of a vehicle intended for street use in California.”1 Consequently , any equipment manufactured to any specifications other than those set forth by the OEMs for a specific application were now illegal for use on modelyear 1966 and newer automobiles. Much to the relief of their astonished guests, however, Grant and his associate quickly added that, for practical purposes, 27156 simply meant that aftermarket products sold in California would no longer be allowed to exceed the design parameters of certified OEM products. And in an age in which Detroit’s parts bins included all of the add-on components needed to assemble a 500-plus horsepower “Super Stock” drag racer, Section 27156 was therefore unlikely to seriously limit the business of manufacturing speed equipment . Convinced that they had nothing to fear, most of those who attended the meeting simply filed what they learned in the back of their minds and returned to their businesses as if nothing had changed.2 The disregard with which these aftermarket representatives received the MVPCB’s news that day was nothing new. Indeed, speed equipment industry insiders had greeted the enactment of nearly every environmental regulation of the early to mid-1960s in exactly the same manner—and with good reason. From California’s pioneering Motor Vehicle Pollution Control Act of 1960 to the federal government’s similar act of 1965, none of these regulations had ever applied to hot rodding. What’s more, the environmental regulatory framework had evolved so slowly and with such an air of uncertainty over the previous two decades that it seemed unlikely to most that meaningful reforms of any consequence for their industry would surface anytime soon. Consider the record: photochemical smog first appeared in the greater L.A. area in the mid-1940s, but its cause remained unconfirmed until 1950. That year a biochemical researcher at Cal-Tech, A. J. Haagen-Smit, discovered a critical link between this urban smog and the automobile. Specifically, he found that unburned hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, and oxides of nitrogen in automobile emissions...

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