Street-To-Racer Conversions Nearly Banned By New EPA Legislation

There’s nothing wrong with trying to minimize vehicle emissions – unless, of course, it involves sneaking changes into irrelevant proposals.

For example, why bury an article trying to prohibit street legal cars from being converted into racers in a 629-page medium- and heavy-truck rule?

This was discovered by the Specialty Equipment Market Association and Republican Senators who read the document carefully and voiced their objections.

According to Autonews, the Environmental Protection Agency’s first response was that, technically, fiddling with a car’s certified emissions has been illegal for a long time and it merely sought to clarify the rules.

After the public outrage, the agency swiftly changed its tune.

“The proposed language in the July 2015 proposal was never intended to represent any change in the law or in EPA’s policies or practices towards dedicated competition vehicles,” it stated on its website. “Since our attempt to clarify led to confusion, EPA has decided to eliminate the proposed language from the final rule.”

It also claimed the controversial proposal was aimed solely at companies selling sell parts and/or accessories that disable emissions controls, not racers who modify cars to for track use.

The question, though, remains: why include such a thing in a truck-related proposal, and a huge one at that where it might go unnoticed? Why did the EPA feel the need to “clarify” things? And since when are track cars subject to emission controls?

Draw your own conclusions, if you will, but to us if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck…