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