Q: I saw a, I’m not sure what you’d call it. Imagine the front half of a motorcycle attached to the back half of an old VW bug. It got me wondering, how much can you modify a vehicle before you’re required to get some sort of approval to drive it on the road?
A: One good indicator that it needs approval is when you don’t know what it is. Is it a 1972 VW Beetle or a 1987 Yamaha Virago? The law would call that a homemade vehicle, described in part as, “A vehicle that has been constructed by using major component parts from one or more manufactured vehicles and cannot be identified as a specific make and model.” A homemade vehicle can also be, and this seems like it in the purest sense, “A vehicle that has been constructed entirely from homemade parts and materials not obtained from other vehicles.”
Those are the easy ones; now let’s make this tricker. The law has one more description: “A vehicle that has been structurally modified so that it does not have the same appearance as a similar vehicle from the same manufacturer.” If you put a hot tub in your 1969 Cadillac you should get an inspection, but what about a jacked-up truck or lowered sportscar? That’s a structural modification. How “the same” does it have to be? I don’t know where the line is (judging by all the raised and lowered vehicles on the road, we’re okay with that) but at some point when you’re not the same enough, you’ll need an inspection.
Let’s say you build or modify a vehicle that crosses that line. What then? You’d need to get an inspection from the Washington State Patrol, and then submit a form to the Department of Licensing. And one more thing- you’ll have to lie to the government.
When you sign that form, you “declare under penalty of perjury under the law of Washington that it meets motor vehicle safety standards described in 49 Code of Federal Regulations Part 571 and Washington State RCW 46.37 and WAC 204.” You know how whenever you sign up for an account online there’s that check box asking if you’ve read the terms of service? And you always check the box even though you never read it? That’s kind of what this is like, but the stakes are higher.
You might believe your homemade vehicle meets all the required safety standards, but you can’t know for sure. You could review the vehicle equipment requirements in the Revised Code of Washington and the Washington Administrative Code. But let’s get real about the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS). The rules are over 1300 pages long. Plus, they adopt by reference well over 100 other documents.
Even if you read all the rules, a homemade vehicle builder isn’t set up to comply with them. Let’s take motorcycle braking systems, for example. You’d need a test track and specialized tools to perform the hundreds of repetitions of various brake tests described in the 37 pages of this section. Now repeat that for every other safety-related system required for your vehicle.
It’s unrealistic for an individual to be able to know and test every vehicle safety system to the standards in the FMVSS. But it’s absolutely essential that any vehicle, whether built in a factory or a driveway, can be safely operated. A vehicle inspection can confirm that all the right parts are there, but it’s up to the vehicle owner to make sure that they all work properly, and that’s a serious responsibility.