FIRST PERSON/OPINION Via e-mail: The issue boils down to 2 fundamental aspects of selling / titling motor vehicles in the US; 1) the number and sequence of digits in the VIN, and, 2) the relationship and attention to detail between the OE and the dealer network regarding the need to comply with CARB regs (which are enforced in a seemingly capricious and arbitrary manner). The beginning of the story is that when a dealer receives a new motorcycle from their OE supplier into their inventory for retail sale, paperwork for that particular machine will arrive separately, sometimes several days apart from the arrival time of the bike itself. The document package will include the MSO (Manufacturers Statement of Origin, the precursor document to issuance of a title) which will have a VIN (Vehicle Identification Number) that contains a very specific code describing the motorcycle’s manufacturing history, and applicability for sale and final use where it is retailed. Any motorcycle currently offered for sale in the US, when designated as legal for on-street operation (meeting DOT and EPA specs) will have a 17 (seventeen) digit VIN with the “correct” variation of alpha/numeric gibberish, including designations for various environmental compliance standards; even folks with decades of experience in the industry will admit that the information in the VIN is indecipherable by anybody this side of the Crab Nebula. Bikes for off-road use only generally DO NOT have the 17 digit VIN (they may be any number of digits fewer than the 17 used for on-road), and the MSO generally states “For Off-Road Use Only”. When an MSO or title for a modern motorcycle crops up with fewer than 17 digits, and more to the point states “For Off-Road Use Only”, you are not going to get it through DMV as a street-legal machine. Now it gets a little blurrier; California spec machines live in a Seinfeld-like bizzaro-world scenario that both trumps and undermines the normal VIN sequence. It becomes the responsibility of the importing/manufacturing OE (NOT the dealer an important distinction) to ensure that the machines that are supplied to a Cal dealer are in fact CARB compliant ( Again a 17-digit VIN, but now the bikes wear an evap canister, perhaps different FI or carb set-up, and have gone through a CARB-specific process that tests a prescribed number of machines that CARB has signed off on, etc.) AND, in the end, the machines supplied to Cal dealers get a nifty little label attached somewhere on the bike (maybe next to the stamped ID plate, perhaps under the seat, but is frequently a cheap self-adhesive label that can’t be found or has fallen off in transit) that states that the machine is CARB compliant. That sticker can make or break a bike’s future. So dealer in Cal receives a machine, and a (matching) paperwork packet with a 17 digit VIN on the MSO OK, office manager / title clerk says “paperwork looks like the bike’s approved for street-use”, and since the OE shipped it to the dealership IN CALIFORNIA all is right with the world. Does the office manager / title clerk go out to the service department to inspect and verify that the CARB sticker is on the bike? Look for the evap canister or other mechanical cues? Think again. Deal gets written up, money changes hands, paperwork sails off to DMV, ostensibly to produce a street-legal title and license plate”¦ Any dealer that’s been in biz more than a few days knows the drill with street-legal, and non-street bikes, especially 17 digit VINs, (the MSOs are very explicit) including all of the tricks in attempting to fudge bikes through a “cooperative” DMV office worker when the numbers “just don’t quite match up”. Fer crying out loud, any slightly devious enthusiast worth their salt has tried some version of this drill over the years ( ever ridden an RG500 Gamma with a plate on the street”¦ I highly recommend it). However, if you’re selling bikes at a legitimate dealership today, you know what works and what the potentially draconian results may be when it doesn’t. Really, not worth the penalty, especially considering the meager profit on the sale of the unit. The bulk of the problem is with the mash-up between MSO paperwork & VINs, the CARB compliance stickers that are frequently difficult to locate (or just plain missing) on Cal-compliant bikes, and an inattentive, dismissive and often adversarial relationship between some small-volume OEs, their dealer network, and CARB. The larger OEs wised-up many years back , and quit producing separate “49 state” and “CAL-Spec” bikes. Many smaller volume OEs still hold (stubbornly and stupidly) to distributing distinctive 49 state and Cal-spec bikes. The Cal-spec bikes do in fact cost more to produce than a 49-state version, and the small-volume OEs seem to feel that saving a few production-line bucks on the non-Cal bikes is worth the administrative nightmare and expense that often results when a mis-ship or paperwork snafu occurs; indeed, OE’s make many mistakes shipping Cal spec bikes to dealerships outside of California, and more to the point of this rant, ship NON Cal-spec bikes and/or paperwork to their California dealers, throwing the burden of straightening out DMV and CARB issues onto the shoulder of the dealer. I have worked in the motorcycle industry (including OE level) since the early 80’s, and have personally witnessed numerous examples of the afore-mentioned problems. Punch line if the California dealer(s) in question knowingly submitted non-road, non CARB-spec, non 17-digit VIN documents through CAL DMV in an attempt to get a street legal title and license for their customer, then they (and any complicit DMV clerks) deserve to get spanked they oughta know the rules, or they shouldn’t have a dealer’s license. However, there are so many arcane variables in the process of paperwork flow and compliance with CARB, especially with small-scale OEs, that there is tremendous potential for incorrect (by CARB’s standards) information to end up moving through the dealer’s office and the DMV. It’s hard for me to imagine that these dealers, who have been in business for a long time and certainly know the rules (and the penalties), would even think of trying the knuckleheaded stunt that they have been accused of, especially given the skinny profit on the units. The OEs play a significant role in the process there’s probably far more to the story than we have heard so far. PS – Oh yeah, what about the retail customer that now owns a rippin’ cool super-moto that can’t be ridden on the street without penalty of impound / arrest? They have the pleasure of owning a hugely devalued item usable only on a racetrack (when and where there’s any super-moto racing these days”¦). Funny, I don’t see any mention of CARB using a portion of the 180K penalty they collected to buy back the machines that were purchased with the “understanding” that they were street-legal, and now cannot be used in that manner. Mark Pfenning Bend, Oregon