My girlfriend and I just moved down to California a couple of weeks ago. We went to get the Volvo smogged so we could register it here and it failed miserably. It is deemed a "gross polluter" by the State of California. Suffice it to say, we were both quite dismayed when we got the results. The car failed all the emissions tests, but the one that put it as a gross polluter was the 15mph NO. We got 2908 parts per million when the maximum allowable is only 1364 PPM.

At this point in time, I'm thinking the car is simply not worth it to fix. The problem is, we really need the car, and can't really afford a new one at this point in time (I'm just starting graduate school). I don't want to start dumping money into this thing, only to find that it still fails. With numbers this high, I doubt a simple fix will get us into the passable limits.

What to do? I have one last (small) hope that the Volvo gurus will save the day with an easy and cheap solution, although I know it's wishful thinking at this point. Thanks in advance for any advice.