I have noticed a few right hand drive imports for sal ein the states. They are JDM imports. Example, a guy has a fancy RHD JDM S2000 for sale on this board. Oddly, every JDM RHD i see for sale is in CALIFORNIA. Why is this? What are your guys import laws?

I was under the impression that you guys could only import 25 year old cars from japan. I am from canada and we have a 15 year rule. As a result every punk kid with 6-10grand in his pocket is driving around with a R32 Skyline GTR or a TT fairladyZ.

 

I'm guessing they bring them in illegally. I know you can bring any car you want into the US as long as it's for "show or race only" meaning it can not be driven on the streets. My guess is that they bring them in as show only vehicles, swap vin tags out with a US model, and then regester them with the US VIN tags. Or just register the car down in Flordia (as I hear you can get away with pretty much anything down there)

 

Or...they register them as the US version of the car. For example, they would just register the car as a US version of the s2000. They have to be able to get the car past the port though in order to do that. I know that's how some people were doing the skylines. They would just register them as a 240sx or something.

The other thing is sometimes people will put real JDM, but it has actually just been a conversion. They take the firewall from a JDM front clip and weld it on the US version of the car. Unless you have done it yourself or know where the work was done, I wouldn't suggest buying a car like that.

You can't just import a JDM car and expect it to be legal. Japan has less restrictions on safety than the U.S., so there is a whole process you have to go through to actually get it legal...including a bunch of crash tests.

I do not know if there is an 'age limit' like there is in Canada. I know that for emissions (at least here in Washington) you don't have to have bi-yearly emission tests done for cars that are older than 25 years old. So there may be a similar law for importing cars. But I doubt it...only because of the safety standards that the U.S. has.

 

A real JDM has a vin that they won't register and you can't get insured. But, there do seem to be a ton of grey market car here.

 

Yah I once imported a 1990 TT fairladyZ from Japan. The VIN is less digits then a standard north american VIN.

Thanks for the info...