COLUMN ONE : Junkers--Targets in Smog War : The dirtiest 10% of cars--older models--emit the majority of pollutants. While some drivers feel guilty, many say they simply can’t afford anything else.

On the Westside of Los Angeles, valets park gleaming Jaguars, BMWs and Porsches by the score. But in places like El Sereno, to the east, the narrow, steep streets belong to the “beasts.”

Rattling and creaking past modest bungalows, they bear the signs of long, full lives: creeping rust, swaths of primer to be painted someday, dented sides and bashed-in tail lights.

Beasts, junkers, wrecks, heaps, sleds . . . by whatever name their owners call them, the dilapidated cars are a welcome sight to Mal Stich, 37, a student who holds several part-time jobs. He knows no one in the neighborhood will tease him about his 1971 Ford station wagon, purchased two years ago.

Stich christened his car Paint--”because it needs some.” The upholstery is ripped. The ceiling sags. Not bad for $300. “It gets me,” he said, “from here to there.”

But air quality officials say cars like Paint also make major contributions to the unhealthful smog that lingers in California’s skies, particularly in the southern part of the state. Automobiles are responsible for most of the air pollution here and the oldest cars tend to spew more than their share of noxious chemicals. They were built before the best emission controls were available.

Statewide, the dirtiest 10% of cars send out 61.4% of the hydrocarbons and 59.8% of the carbon monoxide. “Roughly three-quarters of the dirty cars are 1979 (model year) and earlier,” said Steve Gould, research analyst for the state Bureau of Automotive Repair, which runs the smog check program.

Consequently, air quality authorities are intensifying efforts to round up the beasts and herd them off the road. A variety of proposals aimed at old cars are on the table, but there are many pitfalls too.

The main problem is that beasts provide much of the transportation for the region’s working class and urban poor, whose jobs are moving toward the suburbs, ever farther from the central city communities many of them call home.

They can’t afford to spend thousands of dollars for their wheels, and existing mass transit, many say, just doesn’t serve their needs. “The bus ? No bus comes to my job,” said Major Furnace, a mechanic who commutes from Inglewood to South-Central Los Angeles in a 1977 Ford, for which he spent $900 four years ago.

With 4.2 million registered in California, pre-1980 cars represent more than 25% of the fleet. Stopping them “would make a huge impact,” Gould said, in the battle to cleanse the state’s atmosphere.

With time, of course, the problem will be solved. Eventually, the cars without smog controls will stop running altogether.

But eventually is a lot further off in California than in colder climes, where snowy streets are regularly coated with corrosive salt, which makes cars conk out sooner. Here, by contrast, 20-year-old autos are regularly passed from owner to owner via word of mouth, classified ads, used-car lots, auctions and informal street-corner bazaars.

“In a place like California, the air is worse, the cars last longer and it’s more of a problem,” said John H. Johnson, a Michigan Technological University engineer who is an expert on automotive air pollution. “It makes sense to get rid of (the cars).”

In the latest draft of its smog-fighting plan, to be approved by June, the South Coast Air Quality Management District suggests buying and scrapping 250,000 junkers by 1996. The AQMD envisions a buyback foundation financed by corporate contributions, though details have not been fleshed out.

At least one company contends it should see a return for participation. Unocal Corp. wants to delay some required smog controls on its refineries and according to AQMD Executive Officer James M. Lents “they make some pretty good arguments” that the firm could reduce more pollution for less money by scrapping old cars in the meantime. Indeed, the AQMD board passed a rule last year permitting such arrangements for the aerospace industry.

The AQMD plan also includes a recommendation that the Legislature revise registration fees “to increase the cost of driving older, higher-polluting vehicles.”

And the new federal Clean Air Act mandates higher cost limits for smog check repairs. Now, the owner of a pre-1972 car must make only $50 worth of the fixes required to pass a smog check, while drivers of post-1989 autos must pay up to $300. The new law specifies an across-the-board $450 cost limit.

Such solutions prompt furious criticism. “It is the worst sort of class-based plan,” said James J. Flink, an automotive historian at UC Irvine. “It’s biased against those who do not have anything and it goes against blacks and Chicanos.”

Indeed, Latinos own cars that on average are four years older than those of the general population, said Leo Estrada, an urban planner at UCLA.

“Low-income people would love their cars off the road. But if we can’t get public transportation, then I don’t know what we’re going to do,” said Eric Mann, director of the Labor/Community Strategy Center, which has taken an interest in air quality issues on behalf of minorities and the poor. “They’re saying, to clean up the environment, you shouldn’t be able to pick up your kid. People are going to hear environment and think racist .”

There are questions, too, about the proposals’ effectiveness.

A large-scale buyback program could make California “a magnet for junkers,” predicted Tim Little, executive director of the Coalition for Clean Air. “People would bring them in to sell them to Unocal or to sell them to the people who sell their cars to Unocal.”

And Estrada wondered if high registration and repair fees would mean that “people simply will not register their cars.”

To Lents, of the AQMD, targeting old cars is “something we think is worth doing. But those questions have to be answered.”

The results of a recent pilot project, however, allayed many of his concerns, Lents said.

From June through October of 1990, Unocal and Ford Motor Co. bought more than 8,000 pre-1971 cars for $700 apiece for the demonstration, a public-relations gesture.

Sellers had to register their cars in the four-county area under the AQMD’s jurisdiction. Also, they needed to prove they had owned the cars for at least six months. The autos had to be driven to the downtown scrap yard where transactions were consummated.

Smog checks showed that the cars emitted on average more hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide than expected, but fewer nitrogen oxides. (Hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides combine in sunlight to form ozone, the key component of smog).

Once they had shed their old cars, the sellers apparently turned to . . . newer old cars.

A recent Unocal telephone survey of 800 people who cashed in their clunkers revealed that 46% had bought another car, and only 20% were new, said Michael D. Riehle, a Unocal liaison with the AQMD. Another 46% already had owned another car and 8% didn’t have another car--”yet,” Riehle said.

The median model year for the replacements was 1983. Slightly more than half, then, were probably equipped with the most sophisticated emissions controls.

The controls work by finishing off the job of burning chemicals left by incomplete combustion of gasoline before they can pollute the air.

Before 1975, air injection systems brought oxygen in contact with exhaust manifolds, which helped complete the burn-off of pollutants. About 72% of emitted hydrocarbons, 67% of carbon monoxide and 24% of nitrogen oxides were eliminated, according to Johnson.

After 1975, car manufacturers added oxidation catalysts, which made the reactions happen faster. Still, nitrogen oxides were not affected. And the equipment was fairly easy to remove or modify for drivers who didn’t like the way it affected performance.

By 1981, three-way catalysts had been introduced, which help the pollutants mix with each other and break down into water and carbon dioxide. Along with computers to regulate air-fuel mixtures--forming an optimum environment for the reactions--the new catalysts control 96% of hydrocarbons, 96% of carbon monoxide and 76% of nitrogen oxides, Johnson said.

“They’re also much more difficult to bypass,” he added.

Smog check standards reflect the changes in technology. Older cars are measured against different yardsticks than newer cars; they can pass with higher levels of pollution.

“We have a lot of people come in and swear that their old cars can run cleaner than any new car. They couldn’t possibly meet the newer standards. They couldn’t,” said Don White, an executive with the firm that runs California’s smog check referee stations.

The referees function as a sort of court of appeals for those who have failed. Every day, White and his colleagues hear tales of woe from people who can’t afford the repairs needed for their old cars to pass the test, despite the lower standards they must meet. If the cost of repairs exceeds the legal limit, they can get a waiver--and drive off, polluting legally.

They are always shocked by the notion that their cars are fouling the air more than most, White said. “Everybody wants clean air. But when you get down to the individual basis, people ask, ‘How much can my vehicle possibly contribute to this?’ ”

White could have been describing Edward Shy, driver of a faded gold 1971 Volvo that recently flunked a smog check at a referee station in an industrial section of Los Angeles.

The referee’s testing equipment showed the car emitting hydrocarbon at 2,201 parts per million--more than three times the amount allowed for that year’s model.

A telephone company technician, Shy bought the car for $1,000 last year in the aftermath of a divorce and mounting debts.

He had already exceeded the cost limits for repairs, and so he got a waiver. But his conscience bothered him. “I’m environment-conscious,” he said.

He asked the station manager, Peter Chan, how he could comply with the standards. “Spend a lot of money,” Chan said. “At least $400.” Shy’s mournful response: “I’m about ready to drive it over a cliff.”

Yogi Matharu didn’t feel much better when informed that his father’s 1975 Ford truck, used in the family contracting business, needed an air pump to pass.

Installing the part would be costly. He is thinking seriously of driving unregistered. Although he is concerned about smog, “what’s real,” he said, “is things like the bills are pressing. Things like I need this truck back.”