Photo: Screenshot from YouTube video by Squat Truck
The truck and SUV modification known as the Carolina Squat will be banned in North Carolina starting December 1, 2021. Governor Roy Cooper signed a bill last week that will make the ban effective starting the said date, and the House of Representatives also passed the bill. Those who drive a vehicle with these modifications in NC could get their license revoked for a year.
The modification is also called California Lean, Tennessee Title, or Southern Squat, depending on where it is spotted and who names it, but it means the same thing regardless of the area designation. It involves raising the front of the vehicle while lowering the rear, which leads to the said look.
Both legislators and mechanics consider the modification to be unsafe, as the vehicle is more likely to flip during a collision, and the front visibility could be affected. Furthermore, the headlights are no longer aimed correctly, and this cannot be solved by manual adjustment due to the height difference between the front and the rear axle.
The bill says that a private passenger automobile shall not be altered or modified in any way that leads to a lift of the front of the vehicle by more than three inches from the manufacturer's specified height, and a lowering of the rear of more than two inches from the manufacturer's specified height.
If you read the bill carefully, you will notice there is no mention of the term referring to this modification, and there are specified limits to what can be done to a vehicle that is driven on public roads.
In other words, to make a vehicle illegal in North Carolina under the new bill, the modification we are referring to as the Carolina Squat involves both lowering the rear and raising the front. While we are not lawyers, we think that a lift kit or a suspension kit that lowers the ride height is not subject to this bill.
Those who drive a vehicle that does not abide by this rule after December 1, 2021, in North Carolina will be guilty of an infraction, the bill states, and they will be punished per G.S. 20-176. Those who get three such offenses on their driving record in less than 12 months will get their license suspended under G.S. 20-17 (a) (17), which means that their license will be revoked for no less than a year.
According to the Daily Mail, the decision to punish those who opt for the modification started from an online petition that gathered over 71,000 signatures in 11 months. A different petition, meant to keep the Carolina Squat legal, has already obtained 22,000 signatures.
Sebastian's love for cars began at a young age. Little did he know that a career would emerge from this passion (and that it would not, sadly, involve being a professional racecar driver). In over fourteen years, he got behind the wheel of several hundred vehicles and in the offices of the most important car publications in his homeland. Full profile
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