$3 gas is here!

Followed immediately by the rest of them...

Isn't also against the law to have a car with more then one exterior color in Japan??? BTW, I have never had a car with under 40,000 miles on it.

They also limit the horsepower a production car can produced. IIRC it's something like 320 bhp. However It's been broken regularly by pretty much all japanese car manufacturers.

Ted Novak TRA#5512 IEAS#75

Never heard that one. It makes some sense though, I mean you wouldn't want to confuse tourists and foreign travelers into thinking that You were a taxicab or something.

Most of the vehicles I have owned have had more than one exterior color, although none of them came that way new.

It's not against the law; there's a sort of 'tax' that starts to go up a whole lot once the car reaches about 40,000, though. Once they hit

60,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) the tax is high enough to keep most people from driving them. The tax is based on age, size of engine, and a few other factors. Once they hit the magic 100Km, you may have to pay to get rid of it.

So, while not illegal, it most certainly is discouraged financially. I bet the US car manufacturers would buy a *lot* of politicians to get a law like that passed here .

From an article about buying a car in Japan:

"Sixth, and last, "Sha'ken" (mentioned just above) must be paid every two years on older cars. The amount of Sha'ken goes up depending on the size, engine size and age of the vehicle. During the Sha'ken process certain repairs must be made, and it can get very expensive. On the other hand, it helps insure that your vehicle is well maintained, so you're much less likely to have it breakdown in between. However, the fact is that as cars get older, Sha'ken becomes more and more expensive. Eventually, if the car stops running well or reaches a certain age (even though it's still a good car), you may have to pay a fee just to get rid of it. This is the reason why there are so few older cars in Japan. When cars hit about 60,000 kilometers (maybe

40,000 miles), people start to get rid of them. You'll find very few cars on the road with more than 100,000 kilometers (66,000 miles). Many of these used cars are shipped to other countries, like Australia and New Zealand, where people love the endless supply of cheap, slightly used cars from Japan."

Looks like some guy named Delay is tops on the list

....although in some places they said enough and have banned it

.....and in 1998 the Chevron Oil company said MTBE is "But so far as we know ? as the best available science tells us ? it is not a public health hazard, and it is far from being a nightmare" Fastforward 8 years and it's a Whoops for Chevron.

Chuck

The MTBE folks want protection from lawsuits by the feds because, for an example, the public water system work in our village cost Texaco, then was inherited by Shell, a cool $1.2M. So since congress has protected the scumbags (saudis) it's your taxdollars which pay for much of the cleanup. The oil companies pay when it's cheaper than all the lawsuits from a leak of a 'company' station, which this was here. So now I get the water bill every three months for some bland tasting neutral liquid. It sure doesn't taste like well water before the leak.

Looking for a peanut?

Well now you are getting more specific, rather than Ray who generalizes about all regulations. Certainly most of the "snail darter" and related wildlife protection laws are crap. At some point you just have to apply "eminent domain" and force the critters to find another place to live. Although, they should still do careful site selection, and environmental impact statements. And yes you want electricity production near people and electrical consumers, but don't expect to build nuke plants near active fault lines where people seem to want to live...

They were probably imported from Japan :)

I'm glad I didn't say that.

I said: "Like nuke plants, one purpose for all the regulations and permit hassles is specifically to make it UNprofitable."

My generalization was about the hassles, not necessarily all regulations and permits. However, I can see that I should have made my point more clearly to avoid such confusion.

i