Duane,
SB-100 is for cars that have not been previously registered and are newly built. SB-1578 was intended to let previoulsy registered cars, and cars registered out of state be legally registered in the Republick of Calif. However since both count against the 500 alotted numbers that is getting to be a huge problem. Another all important factor is the DMV and if you can get a person who is knowledgeable and will work with you. There is about a 5% chance of this.
Paragraph 1 SB-1578. "If the application for registration is received after the dept. has registered 500 special construction vehicles during that calendar year and the application requists a model year determination different from the model year determination assigned in the previous aplication. The vehicle owner would be subject to the emission control and inspection requirements applicable to the model year assigned in the previous registration.
What SB-1578 basically was for is to allow people to re-register their cars as something different from what the original regisatration was. If the car is from another state and is already registered and you can get a good DMV person and give them a fair estimate of the value of the car you can register it just as you would a regular Ford or Chevy. Since you are not planning to change what the car is registered as. I don't think you can use SB-1578. If you know a good person at your local DMV who is knowledgeable in this field, talk to them first and tell them exactly what you are buying and they can then tell you what you need to do to register it in Calif. This is still a very vague area in this state as the DMVs have so many different interpetations of what to do and few of them even read the MEMO that was sent to them telling them every step to use in registering special construction vehicles. SB-100 won't work for any previously registered car regardless of what state it was registered in. I know this is confusing and unfortunately there is no simple answer in this state as it varies from one DMV to the next.
Ron
