[cobrap51d]

People are being arrested and companies are being shut down. As most of you know the CHP showed up at some of our homes on a Sunday morning to examine our cars, paperwork and documents related to registration and/or purchase of our vehicles. Just for your information they did have search warrants. I just wanted to make that point clear. The point was not to bash the CHP. They do a fine job for us here in California.

At some point DMV started issuing refusal of registrations. (I’m not sure if that is the official name, but that’s the idea). I’m not clear yet on why some of us have to sell our cars out of state but they are no longer legal on the roads of California. I believe the owners that are required to sell their cars are ones that bought turnkey cars from builders. The builders are the companies that DMV will eventually shut down with their actions, along with a lot of peripheral businesses.

The Cobras were only the first ones because it was easy for the DMV to recognize our cars based on a common VIN number pattern. I don’t know where they are going next but it seems to me like they have to go after everybody. They can’t just pick on Cobra owners.

I’ve heard there are approximately 70,000 vehicles on the road today that DMV will need to process. Can you imagine the man-hours it will take to process all these vehicles? It took over a year to get Weaver through the system and I don’t think they are done with him yet. “Will it take 70,000 years to process the remaining vehicles (joking)”?

The vehicles that were processed this year had to use SPCN numbers from the general pool. Due to the DMV use of SPCN number to rectify past mistakes it’s now IMPOSSIBLE for a hobbyist to purchase a Factory Five, Superformance, Kirham, Shell Valley or any other Kit car on the market. The companies that support this market will also feel this in the near future.

This issue needs to be viewed with more clarity. I don’t think the DMV has enough time and money to process all the people. It’s a huge and costly undertaking.

If DMV were to offer immunity to the 70,000 vehicles currently in question it would generate a large amount of revenue. I’ve heard the revenue from this offering could generate from $25Million to $1Billion. I know that’s a wide range, but I’ve talked to a lot of people and the range is quite large. From the people I’ve talked to I believe the range is from $500Million to $1Billion.

I contacted the lobbyist group Advocation Inc. in Washington DC (SEMA) to see what their thoughts were on this. According to Mr. McDonald he was to busy at this time and he handed me off to Chris Cole in Sacramento. Chris informed me he would be getting back with me soon. I’ve left numerous messages with Chris but he doesn’t return my calls.

I also left a message with the Senior Vice president of “Good Guys”, to get their view on it. No calls as of yet.

I have a call into research specialist employed by a Senator here in town. No word as of yet.

I emailed the California Performance Review with some details and a suggested solution. Nothing back at this time.

I emailed Chon Guiterriz DMV/CPR and have not received a reply.

I work on this almost every day. So, I’m sure I’ve missed some details. It’s amazing to me how much time an individual can spend on something like this and not get very far. You can bet if a celebrity were to create as much of a stink over this as I have that they would at least have heard back from some of the people. SEMA is the one that has disappointed me the most. Maybe calling their Lobby group is the wrong approach?

I’m tired off to bed. Any ideas are welcome.

Allen Lung
916-505-7784