It’s not a scam. Some countries like Germany don’t allow old cars at all.

We should develop sensible public transit. You don’t want old cars belching out pollutants in dense populated area. Move out in boonies if you don’t want to smog your car.

Most of the tech advances in engines came in the 80s to mid 90s with closed-loop electronic fuel injection, catalytic converters, and onboard diagnostic systems.

If the car otherwise passes the smog test and has a small amount of smoke on initial startup, it’s a scam. Plain and simple.

This assumes that there was any smoke, that the people at the smog shop aren’t just trying to scam him somehow.

NY has safety inspections. I once took my car to a shop that claimed that one of the joints in the steering system was loose (cost $200 to replace), and wanted to replace a tail light because of a small chip in the glass (cost $300). When I asked them to show me the loose part, they pointed out a part that I had replaced a few months ago after buying the car!

I told the owner to go screw himself with an icepick, literally. He kicked me out without even charging me the inspection fee — so saved a bit of money there. Nice.

I took it to another garage, it passed inspection (I asked for them to double check the joint and they showed me that it was really OK), and I added to the original garage’s collection of 1* Yelp reviews. And the garage had the nerve to respond to my review saying that I was trying to scam them, good for a laugh!