In Metro Atlanta, all cars are required to pass an emission inspection each year in order to renew their tag and stay street legal. In theory, this is a good system to maintain our air quality. In practice, it has some problems.

I own my grandfather's 2002 Oldsmobile Intrigue (which he explicitly told my father never to give to me) with only about 104,000 miles on it. For many years, I've spent too much money keeping it running. Right now, it has a broken smog filter system. I'd fix it, but parts are hard to come by, which is no surprise considering that GMC retired the entire Oldsmobile brand in 2004. After consulting with the local GMC dealership, my mechanic found and tested several potential aftermarket replacements, but none worked. Oldsmobile, it seems, didn't do a great job of documenting the parts necessary for a car they were discontinuing.

In their infinite wisdom, Georgia lawmakers foresaw this problem and allowed the Georgia's Clean Air Force (GCAF), which is responsible for oversight of the emissions testing, to give a car a waiver if it can be declared Non-Complying Obsolete. I applied for such a waiver. They denied my request. They spoke to my mechanic who explained the problem, and then they said their much more knowledgeable researchers could find suitable parts online, though they declined to share which parts they found. They suggested I look at Autozone, which I think was their way of politely telling me to go to hell. (I looked. Autozone does not have the part.)

The GCAF offers that I can still apply for a Repair Waiver if I spend a total of $1,176 on repairs. To date this year, I have spent $816 on parts from eBay and mechanics bills before we ran into this availability problem. What's the point of paying a mechanic another $360 to remove and reinsert the old parts over and over? Even if I did, I expect the GCAF would still find another polite way to tell me go to hell.

The "good" news is that there's another way to bypass the emission requirement: cars 25 years old and older are exempt from the requirement. By my math the Oldsmobile will be 25 years old in 2027. Although the tag expires on my birthday, I wrote a letter to my local tax commissioner's office asking if I could simply wait to renew in January. They said no. Apparently the 25-year exemption is somehow tied to my birthday, not the year of renewal. In response to my repeated pleas, they insist that they will not let me renew it with an emissions exemption until next September.

So, my options are

1. Donate to my mechanic $380 for a car that is increasingly not worth repairing and hope the GCAF will issue a waiver;

2. Cancel my insurance and mothball the car in my driveway for a year;

3. Try to sell a car with a permanently on "service engine soon" dashboard light to someone born in January; or

4. Move myself outside the Metro Atlanta area.

That last option is looking increasingly attractive.

I'm frustrated that despite my best efforts, I haven't found a solution that doesn't require me to buy a new house or a new car. But that's why everyone hates government, isn't it?

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Breaking news! My 2002 Oldsmobile Intrigue, which cost me $1,728.86 in mechanic bills to keep running in 2024, has already cost me an additional $1,254.43 in the first six weeks of 2025 alone (for valve gasket covers, power window assembly switch, and wheel bearings). And it *still* needs that new set of tires. This is becoming a problem.

My first car, by which I mean the first car to which I held the title, was a 1985 Crown Victoria Country Squire station wagon. Mom gave it to me when I went to college. (She bought herself a Mazda Miata. Mid-life crisis much?) I drove it until the transmission broke. It wasn't the only thing on the car not working, and I made the decision to sell it rather than spend thousands I did not have to repair it. We all loved it, and in hindsight, I might have done things differently, but maybe not. I'm sure I really thought I was making the best decision I could at the time.

My second car was a used 1990 Honda Acura. It soon developed a leaky sun roof that was more expensive to repair than the Country Squire's transmission. I didn't fix it, either. Eventually the cabin smelled of mildew which I tried to hide with vanilla air fresheners. You can begin to understand why my fourth car was an open-top 1995 Jeep Wrangler.

(Honorable mention to my third car, a very '90s burgundy and beige pregnant egg, a 1992 Chevrolet Caprice Classic, which I inherited from my late grandmother. I didn't keep it long before selling it to my father after he wrecked whatever his latest car was. I borrowed it back from him for a 24-hour road-trip down to Jacksonville for a Jaguars/Dolphins Monday Night Football game on October 12, 1998. That trip is most memorable for B) the terrible headache I had on the entire 8-hour drive home because my poverty and anxiety kept me from stopping to get anything to eat, and A) my yelling "I'm going to kill him" at the highway patrolman who pulled us over for a broken taillight. The "him" in this case was Dad, who had assured me the car was in perfect condition for driving, but the cop certainly didn't know that. Thankfully, my companion on that trip, Matt, has always been a fast talker, and we're both white.)

The point here is that I really need to start thinking about throwing in the towel on the Oldsmobile. Is it time I draw a line in the sand? How much is too much? If I have to be spending so much money on a car, I'd rather be spending it on the Jeep.

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A quick search reveals that I've never explicitly mentioned here on the blog that I have long owned the same two cars. I have the 1995 Jeep, which is the last year the YJ model was available. You've met it; I love and brag my Jeep about frequently. But I also own a 2002 Oldsmobile Intrigue. Two-thousand two also happens to be the final year of Intrigue production. (I'm a niche collector!) As my previous silence about it should indicate, I do not love the Olds.

True story: it was my father's Oldsmobile. Briefly. It was actually purchased by my father's father, who bragged that he got a great deal on it. As I mentioned above, 2002 was the final year this car was made, and the reason it was a great deal is because the electrical systems of Intrigues are famously... sorry, I was trying to think of a diplomatic way of saying "crappy," but no, it doesn't deserve diplomacy; it's just crappy.

When my grandfather was no longer able to drive (I forget when, exactly, but 2009/10-ish), my father took the car. The one condition that my grandfather tried to impose was that under no circumstances was Dad to give the car to me. So now maybe you can understand my template for how to treat a father.

Anyway, it may have taken 22 years, but at long last, my very temperamental Oldsmobile has successfully reached 100,000 miles!

And it's only cost me $1,360.93 in repairs in the past 4 months! And it needs a new set of tires, so cut me a little slack about that "low washer fluid" idiot light. Car ownership is expensive.

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