Like many things in the US, the responsibility lies with the individual rather than the government, which can be a good or bad thing depending what side of the political fence you come down on. But back to the subject at hand, personally I think there's a lot to be said for a UK style test given how litigious it can be over here if anything bad were to happen that were traced back to an area of owner responsibility such as build quality or safety equipment (and to give someone like me that never built a car before some measure of confidence in their work).
California is interesting in that the safety tests are minimal (similar to mr2by4 but without the horn check!). It's emissions that's the difficult one here - by far the most stringent in the US (if not the world). However, thanks to a car enthusiast politician who got a law passed a few years ago, there is a special provision to allow 500 homebuilt cars per year to receive an emissions exemption. Once you have this, you can literally put any engine you want in your car without restriction. If you don't care about the exemption (eg using a newer engine with all emissions equipment fitted), then registration is even easier - just the above mentioned 'safety test' and DMV paperwork.
In my case, even though my engine is smog compliant (using the stock 164 engine and ECU unmodified), I have the exemption - it meant standing in line at the local DMV office at 4am on Jan 1, 2013 to be sure to get one of the 500 exemptions for that year. I can now put any engine I want in there in the future.
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