Cal. Veh. Code § 5907

A secured party who holds a security interest in a registered vehicle that constitutes inventory as defined in the Uniform Commercial Code, who has possession of the certificate of ownership issued for that vehicle, if the certificate of ownership has been issued, need not make application for a transfer of registration and the Uniform Commercial Code shall exclusively control the validity and perfection of that security interest. This section does not apply to the extent that subdivisions (a) to (c), inclusive, of Section 9311 of the Uniform Commercial Code apply to a security interest, because the transaction is not described in subdivision (d) of Section 9311 of that code.