Hey kids, taking the beaters off the road is good for the automobile industry, new and used, which is good for everyone, think about it
I don't know if this is good or bad, but you never see beaters in Europe....then again we saw a cop driving a Porshe as highway patrol in Holland, guess if you are going to catch speeders, eh? then again all the taxis in Holland are Mercedes and BMWS....
and Ontario has this program, which is a rip off, you have to get your car tested every three years for clean air emissions - I thought it was a scam dreamt up by the car mechanics, but apparently they don't make any money off this deal either, the government does though but I had to laugh, major digression, sorry but this is funny - I have married neighbours that were having an affair, going on for years, but they both lost their second beater vehicles, under the clean air emissions program, and they needed their cars to rendezvous for afternoon delight, since their spouses, who worked during the day, needed the good first car,
in Ontario if your car doesn't pass, you either have to repair the car up to a ceiling of $450 (how kind of the gubmint huh) or it is taken off the road, obviously neither car passed and they wouldn't have been worth the repairs, must have put a serious cramp in the lovelife, LOL, God works in mysterious ways....
You do, but they're rarely as bad. In Germany at least, there's something called the TÜV, which is an inspection and smog check on steroids, far more picky than in any US state, including unauthorized accessories (which is why you don't see LEDs and neons all over German cars). It's required every, IIRC, two years, and it's a big deal for car owners. So much so that used car ads show the date of the last TÜV, with those cars with the most time left until the next TÜV being the most desirable.
So basically if you see a junker with German plates spewing smoke, it's got max two years left unless someone fixes it. At that point it'll be junked or sold off to Eastern Europe.