You may know the classic Rush song about the Red Barchetta – which was (in the song) an archetype for cars from the Before Time. Specifically, before what was referred to in the song, as the Motor Law – which was a ban on cars that operated outside the boundaries of the dystopian control grid imagined by the lyricist.

My uncle has a country place, no one knows about . . .

It’s a great song about a horrible time. When it came out – back in the ’80s – the scenario it depicted seemed unlikely. Of course, America was still America back in the ’80s. The Safety Cult was still just that. A cult. A fringe element. Not the national religion as it has become in our time. Also, the Environmental Cult was still just that. It was – like computer science – for the geeks. The rest of us were out having fun, usually in our cars.

He says it used to be a farm, before the Motor Law . . .

Time passed. Things – as they tend to do – changed.

The Safety Cult and the Environmental Cult are both mainstream religions now. Almost everyone at least genuflects whenever an expected response is required to some new proposal that will “keep us safe” or “protect the environment.” It is a kind of rote catechism. Tired, but people – most people – still respond as required. It is something like that business in church when the priest says it’s time to greet the person next to you in the pew and pretend you are best buds.

Sundays I elude the Eyes and hop the Turbine Freight . . . To far outside the Wire, where my white-haired uncle waits . . .

Antique cars – those made before the actual Motor Laws (plural, to reflect the fact that there was a cascade of them, still cascading)  got passed beginning in the early ’70s – have long been anathema (the properly religious word) to the acolytes of both cults that are now established religions. Like Papal Bulls, everything that could be hurled at them was. It became impossible to manufacture cars like the ones that existed before the Motor Laws. New cars had to be “safe” and “clean.” Of course, once that was accomplished, the requirements evolved – proving it was never really about either “safety” or “the environment.” It was about getting rid of cars – the Barchettas (the interesting and fun cars) especially.

I strip away the old debris, that hides a shining car
A brilliant red Barchetta, from a better, vanished time
Fire up the willing engine, responding with a roar!
Tires spitting gravel, I commit my weekly crime…

Well, now they’re being open about it. In Minnesota, at any rate. A bill – HF 3865 – has been proposed that would pretty much ban the driving of Barchettas except on weekends and during daylight hours only. “Vintage cars, classic cars, collector vehicles, street rods, military vehicles, and classic motorcycles would only be allowed on public roads during daylight hours on Saturday and Sunday. That means nothing in the evening or during the week,” notes an article about this dirty business published by Autonotion. 

Wind in my hair –
Shifting and drifting –
Mechanical music
Adrenalin surge –

The pretextual justification for HF 3865 is that it will address the “problem” of Barchettas being driven regularly, as daily drivers. There is – of course – no such problem. In the first place because the number of people who regularly drive vehicles that are 30-plus years old is minuscule and so an irrelevance as far as “the environment” is concerned. The reason they do not regularly drive them is because doing that is at odds with preservation – which is the whole point of owning one of these Before Times machines. This is especially true in places like MN where there is winter – and road salt. Probably 99.5 percent of the Barchettas in MN are tucked in garages for the duration of the winter, which is five months out of the year in MN.

Well-weathered leather
Hot metal and oil
The scented country air
Sunlight on chrome
The blur of the landscape
Every nerve aware

As far as “safety” – well, what of it? More finely, how did it become the business of the federal government to “keep us safe”? It is nowhere in or even implied in the Constitution, which was written by men who didn’t think they were in the parenting business.

Also, has it occurred to anyone that the majority of late-model model vehicles are – technically – not “safe,” either since many of them do not comply with every current federal “safety” standard? A 2015 Mercedes S-Class sedan, for example, is a car that would be illegal to sell as a new car today because it does not comply with every Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) imposed since 2015. But is the car “unsafe”?

Suddenly ahead of me, across the mountainside
A gleaming alloy air-car shoots towards me, two lanes wide
I spin around with shrieking tires, to run the deadly race
Go screaming through the valley as another joins the chase

It’s a silly question.

Both on the face of it and otherwise. If it was legal – and so, presumably, “safe” to sell the 2015 S-Class when it was new then the car is still “safe” (enough) today. Just the same as regards a Barchetta such as my ’76 Pontiac Trans-Am. It was legal for Pontiac to sell it back in ’76 and so illegalizing the driving of it today, in the name of “safety,” is just an obvious pretextual excuse to ban what they don’t want us driving.

Drive like the wind
Straining the limits of machine and man
Laughing out loud
With fear and hope, I’ve got a desperate plan
At the one-lane bridge
I leave the giants stranded
At the riverside
Race back to the farm
To dream with my uncle
At the fireside…

Note in particular the proposed ban on driving a Barchetta after sundown. It is a thing for Barchetta owners to meet up for a show as dusk is falling and this idea that they must scurry home as soon as the sun begins to set is so obviously meant to harass them into defeat that it hardly needs to be dissected any further. Same goes for the weekdays ban. It would mean no afternoon drive on a nice warm afternoon – just for fun. Because the whole point is to curb stomp the fun as well as the freedom that, when you think about it, is a kind of working tautology for fun in that you cannot have one without the other. 

“It’s not just Minnesota residents who have to deal with restrictions and backlash for owning a classic car,” notes the Autonotion piece. “California has been pushing hard for stricter emissions policies, which means vehicles passing smog tests and other strict requirements that many classic cars would fail. This would essentially make some classic cars undrivable in California, a state known for its rich car culture.”

Maybe the time has come to replace those Antique Vehicle tags with the Jolly Roger pirate flag.

Maybe we now live at a time where it is honorable to be a “criminal.”

Just like in the song.

 . . .

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