Dirty Diesels and the NZ PR campaign

trouble is jacidia will take cake off you and feed it to them.
a problem for them is a problem you will be paying to fix.

couple of points,
there is a still a lot of older cars on road (often sort after these days) that pollute a lot even on good condition, which most of them are not. almost all of the older vehicles would be classed as "broken but the owner doesn't know it". that simply wear and tear.
a lot of the older ones we disable the emission controls because they cause more problems than they solve with worn engines.
you would struggle to find any older landcruiser or patrol that would pass its factory emissions standard (or most older vehicles for that matter). yet they are still perfectly usable vehicle.

the other issue is political, if the rules are in place its very easy for them to move the goal posts to whatever they want, purely for political reasons.

a simply solution is to simply keep 2nd hand car prices down and people will simply upgrade away from heavily polluting vehicles. that allows people to keep an old landcruiser that they rarely use, especially as they also have a car that does most of the mileage which is cheaper to run with the side benefit of being pollution friendly.

Most likely the policy would be the emission standard that the car was required meet when it was first presented for inspection in NZ.

Getting a bit beyond my knowledge, but my understand is that the first emission's standards kicked in on 1st Jan 2004 for new models, and on the 1st Jan 2005 for existing models. As such the (NZ new) 80 series cruises and the likes would be safe (other than the visible smoke test that is already in place).

The removal or tampering with emissions controls equipment was outlawed back in 2007. In service testing would assist with identifying vehicles with removed & tampered emission control equipment that are currently operating illegally.

Yes some currently usable vehicles will need repair / rebuilds / ring replacements. Yes it won't be cost effective for some vehicle's. This is nothing new, we already have a crude visible smoke test as part of the WOF process.

Law makers have the power to change whatever laws they want, but I feel that requiring vehicles meet or say come within 20% of the emissions profile they were required to have at the time of import would be political palatable. I think requiring all vehicles on the road to meet Euro 6 emissions standards by June 2021 would not be politically palatable. Our left wing politicians are highly concerned about regressive impacts, and our right wing politicians are concerned about rural interests.

With regards to 2nd hand vehicles. Thanks to used imports from japan, preference for (histrically) reliable Japanese brands and unsalted roads, I would say NZ has some of the cheapest used cars in the world. Just sold a 2006 corolla hatch for $3500. In the cheapest 2006 Corolla hatch on the aussie autotrader site is $5999. The one I sold had a towbar, aftermarket head unit / door speaker, dynamat in door, and 8mm+ left on tires too. Not really sure what much else we could do in this regard.

The above seems to miss the likes of heavy 4x4, which maintain a high value despite their age, mileage, condition and emissions.

As a closing note, We need to get rid of the 20 year loophole to our import rules, or at least bump it up to 30 years. This is an area where we are being a genuine dumping ground.

man has been improving air quality since the 1950s to my knowledge and one can now see the improvements. now man wants to make air his version of perfect. what a waste of money and time. no government will tax the air clean. it is impossible.

the problem with all this is it really hinges on what spec to you have to comply with. to loose and it becomes a pointless waste of money at tax payers expense. to tight and people loose their cars causing untold amounts of financial hardship.

i think you miss the point that its not a case of some cars would need fixing up, they would be scrap as an engine rebuild is worth more than the car and the owners probably can't afford it.
they would be much better off to upgrade when they can afford to.
otherwise it simply becomes a punishment for poor people.

one of the problems is that trying to keep a car in its original performance condition as it ages becomes very expensive, which would see most cheap cars removed from nz. which of course is going to have a very big impact to the poor and no impact to the rich.
just as labour and greens have previously proposed, tax the poor so the rich can have cheaper cars or buy ev's. put the cost of emissions onto poor people who can't afford it.

same thing with emission controls, yes its illegal but those systems are so old and worn they cause more emissions than reduce them.

i'm not up on the latest but i think the 20 year rule has been effectively crippled due to the stability control requirement.
its purpose is that people can import things like offroad vehicles, specialty and vintage cars. however i think its been miss used to bring in old crappy cheap vans which have had their day. would prefer it be tightened up so its used for what its meant for.