Questions on importing a car

[yankee]

I have been living and working in Australia for 9 years. I want to build a gt40. My worry is if I build a car and then I move back to the U.S. could I just remove the motor from it and not have to do the emissions testing? I would have had the car registered here and been driving it.

[Ian K]

Actually, the hardest thing to get past is the Federal Safety standards. I have a friend who
is originally form Canada, and brought her car
with her. When she tried to get it reg'd in
the US, her emissions were fine, but she has been
held up (and currently refused US reg) due to
the fact she a) does not have air bags and
b) she does not have automatic seatbelts.
The air bags are the stickler. In '94 the
US passed a law that said any car imported to
the US must have air bags. Apparently, there
is some issue about whether or not the car
was originally equipped with them. After some
research, I found that her car, even in US
spec, did not come standard with air bags (it
was built in '91). However, she still has
yet to get this resolved to her liking. BTW,
her car cannot be retrofitted according to
the manufacturer, otherwise, this would all
have been resolved by now.

As far as replicas and vintage cars, I'm not
sure how the rule would be applied, but I'm
pretty sure the safest method would be to
slightly disassemble the car, and bring it
in in pieces. Removing the engine and
transaxle should suffice, that's how CAV
imports them, and I'm sure a complete car
from RF would be imported without engine at
the least, and the engine would be installed by Gordon Levy.

Ian

[Ron Earp]

Yankee,

All you need to do is pull the motor and bring it in as car parts. The duty will be about 3% on performing this type of import.

Then, you just install the engine and register it as a constructed car, replica, for whichever state you are in. As Lynn pointed out this is a crap shoot, but suffice to say that in most states it is pretty easy.

You WILL NOT have to worry about any Federal tests or emissions if you do not bring it in as a car. If you bring it in as a car you are in for a world of hate, I have about 50% of the docs on this (was looking at getting an Elise in a couple of years ago) and it is not easy. The best way for the Elise was to pull the engine and bring it in as a chassis, not a car. Then build it an register it as a constructed car.

Ron

Aside from the import issue at the federal level which I am not sure about, there will also be issues to deal with on a state level. The extent to which these may or may not hinder you will depend tremendously on the state you would be moving back to. In our research on what it takes to register a non-production car here in North Carolina we discovered that the laws affecting the registration process and/or emissions testing vary amazingly. A couple of things seem to be constant, the DMV will want to see some sort of documentation to show that your car was not stolen or has not been built with stolen parts and your car will most certainly have some sort of safety inspection in order to be street legal. Beyond that the emissions standards to which you can be held vary from complete exemption (the case here in NC and the first 500 applicants/year in CA) to requiring every piece of emissions equipment that came on that year model of car. Now which year is it can also vary tremendously from what it looks like, to what ever you were able to registered it as initially or upon reentry (either yourself or through a title service), to the year of the engine block, to the year of the chassis vin if there is one.

Good luck at this total crap shoot!