For those of you who don’t believe me when I say that federal regulations are an impediment, consider this story from Popular Mechanics about a Liverpudlian living in Texas who’s trying to make new (replica) DeLoreans:
In December 2015, Congress passed the FAST Act, which included a provision allowing for “low-volume manufacturers†to produce up to 325 turnkey replica cars a year that would not need to be subjected to today’s safety and production standards and could be built conforming to the production year’s requirements.
For a DeLorean, that’s 1981 at a time, for example, when airbags were not yet required. This was a massive victory for those wanting to own their replica Cobra, Morgan, or even 1955 Corvette. It was also a huge deal to builders like Wynne. The company immediately made plans to go back into production on the iconic automobile, looking to bring in ex-Lotus staff to help reengineer the car (just like the original) and swapping out the original 130-horsepower engine with a new, modern 300- to 400-horsepower one.
They had enough original parts to build 350 to 400 cars. For missing parts, they had all the schematics and drawings to reproduce new ones. It was a nearly ideal situation. In the fall of 2016, DeLorean started accepting applications “from those with an interest in being placed on a reservation list†to purchase a car. “It was a pre-intent to intent to maybe buy a car,†chuckles Wynne. The list, according to Wynne, is now up to 5,000 people. Everyone was excited for a brand-new replica DeLorean.
Except there was one problem.
Buried in the act, the provision says that the Department of Transportation, more specifically the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), has 12 months to issue specific regulations and processes around how the low-volume manufacturers go about making these replicas. Three years later, this still hasn’t happened yet and it’s a source of extreme frustration.
“They basically need to approve a one-page document with a bunch of checkboxes on it. It’s like, ‘Come on.’†He doesn’t know the reasons for the holdup, but speculates it’s due to change of administration in 2016 and that it took a while for NHTSA to get a chief counsel and a director. And, of course, there’s now the weeks-long government shutdown.
The answer probably is that no one’s pushing it and it’s just not a priority. Any notion that the federal government operates smoothly, efficiently, or impersonally is, shall we say, an exaggeration.
Or some of the bureaucrats, all of whom are leftists, decided they don’t like the law and are sabotaging it.
If Bolton, Pompeo and Mattis can veto decisions by Trump (e. g., N. Korea), certainly some soy boy or black guy in DC can veto a Congressional law.