Antique license plates can be a real time and money saver for many enthusiasts who have a special classic car that sees limited road use. Arkansas is one of many states that offer such a plate to older vehicles for $7 a year.

This $7 tag exempted owners from having to pay additional fees on top of it, including renewals, which can save you tons of dough whether you're building a collection or merely struggling to keep a car going whose parts are no longer available at your local dealership.

Sadly, many beloved classics from the IROC-Z Camaro to the Porsche 911 RS America will no longer be eligible for Arkansas' $7 Antique Motor Vehicle tag, as the state's lawmakers apparently don't understand that there were classic cars made after 1974.

Arkansas bumped its minimum vehicle age up from 25 to 45 years in Act 368, snubbing the entire "youngtimer" or "Radwood era" of classic cars in the process and angering many Arkansas car enthusiasts.

Arkansas State Representative Jack Fortner, who sponsored the bill for this change, says he wanted to bring the intent of the bill back to its roots all the way back in 1957.

"What this bill is to honor the content of the original bill which was written in 1957 and it was at the time the wording said to honor the collector car and hobbyist and that's why they did it," Fortner told local station KFSM.

But let's be clear: this is also about generating more revenue for the state, as it not only rules out two decades of classic cars from applying for the low-cost tag, but also requires that you show proof of a second, normally registered vehicle that will be used as a daily driver. Fortner, who owns several historic cars of his own, told KFSM that he believes many owners are simply putting Antique Motor Vehicle plates on beaters that get daily driven anyway.

"I wanted to make it more fair and equitable. We all pay registration, we all are required to have insurance on our car and we register every year. This is the only tag in the state of Arkansas that is not renewed," Fortner told KFSM.

Yet it's clear from the changes in the text that this is a case of misguided ageism against newer classics and the often younger enthusiasts who tend to love them—and it certainly didn't take the law all the way back to 1957. Muscle cars didn't hit it big until the 1960s, yet Fortner's changes clearly struck out "action era" in the text of the former law that defines what qualifies as a "historic and special interest vehicles" for the $7 tags and wrote "Muscle car era" in its place.

If the definition of an antique car can change to encompass later muscle cars, there's no reason it shouldn't have still included cars that were 25 years and older. You'd be hard-pressed to find a person who doesn't revere cars like the Ferrari F40 as the historic cars that they are, and the F40 stopped production in 1992.

That's on top of the effort that it takes to keep a more modern classic on the road, which often involves special-ordering parts and scavenging junkyards, forums, and for sale posts as your local dealership and parts stores probably don't keep what you need on hand anymore.

It's clear from Fortner's comments to local station KNWA that he doesn't really understand the subject he's legislating, as he told them, "A ‘70s car you're gonna have to be an automotive purist, or at least someone that likes to tinker and work on your cars to keep it running."

That's exactly the situation with ‘80s and ‘90s cars, too!

"These cars are high maintenance," 1983 Porsche 911SC owner Robert Wintercorn told KFSM. "If you do drive them to work every day it's not going to last you’re going to get a week or two out of it and something is going to go wrong. It's a 25-year-old car, they don’t sell parts of them anymore. It takes work to keep up with these cars."

In other words, even if you were daily-driving one of these $7-plated cars, you were going to pay a lot of money anyway. It's part of what made the $7 tag so appealing: it offered relief to enthusiasts who spent a chunk of change keeping an older car on the road.

It's clear that Fortner should have asked actual car enthusiasts about this change before suggesting it—again. Yes, this is the second time Fortner has tried to pass a law like this, after pulling his first attempt after considerable pushback from Arkansas car enthusiasts. Fortner told KATV at the time: