Jdog,
Not sure how much of this can be taken seriously, but when I spent the half day on the phone with the CARB people, the head person told me that they were in favor of auctioning off the 500 numbers as they had people willing to pay $100K for one of them. He said there would be no need for an amnesty period then as that woud take many of the low end people out of the market. That pretty much sums up what I heard from some other sources too. Also when I asked him how many any one person could buy, he said as many as they can afford if he was doing it. His exact words, "Just think how much money we could raise by doing this each year." However I don't think the intent of the bill was for the select few to get numbers and a select few in Sacramento to get wealthy off of it.
As for the old Buicks, they should fall under the 30 year exemption for the most part.
Ron
