What are all the hassles of importing a car from Japan to the U.S? Is it worht it? Has anyone done this? What is the availabiliy of JDM parts in the U.S. for imported cars and how hard are they to get as far as maintenence and replacement parts go?

 

As far as I know, the actual importing of the car is easy, its insuring it that may be the hard part. It depends on your insurance company's policy on imports, just give them a call and ask them what their policies are. If they don't send someone out to inspect the car, then it should be pretty easy, but if they do, you may be in for a decent amount of bills for misc. safety features that the car may lack. A great site to check out if you are interested in importing a car is http://www.batfa.com If that site links you to some british acting thing, switch the "t" and the "f" and thats it. As far as getting parts, alot of it (once again depending on the car) may have to be imported from japan too. Sorry I couldnt help more, gl and hf.

-Trump

 

Thanks for the link to the site. I already know it depends from car to car I was asking how hard is all of it in general. How expensive is it and generally speaking is it worth it? At first I always thought JDM Japanese cars cost more than ADM Japanese cars but now after looking into it more for a few weeks I found out that JDM cars are actually cheaper in value than Japanese imports built and sold in the U.S. Thats because not only its their product and domstic vehicles but in Japan they trade their cars evey three to four years because its expensive to maintain used cars in Japan because of regulations. That causes the value of cars to depriciate quicker in Japan making them cheaper. Even now with those regulations lifted its still expensive. If Nissan sold the Skyline here it would be more than it would to buy in Japan off the JDM market. I heard that because Japanese cars depriciate quicker and they trade and buy new cars more frequently because used cars can be alot to maintain making a car thats 4 or 5 years old in Japan less reliable than in America and Europe alot of people in Brtitain take advantage of that import Japanese cars.

 

i wasn't too sure about what you were saying...so if im misunderstanding you then i apologize, but importing this car is not easy....

you can insure the damn thing anyways because there is no VIN number...so sure...try to get insurance. first off, try letting customs even let you drive the thing off the shipyard...it ain't going to happen sorry.

i found a thread for you to read on it:

http://answers.google.com/answ...59326

the regulations are a lot different in japan/usa, and because of this, jdm cars may not meet our requirments for a safe car (this means you would have to perform crash tests etc..). MotoRex has done all this and charges $25k....little steep, but from what i have read they're the only ones. insuring it will be costly as well. if you want a skyline that bad...closest thing i can think of is a 240sx with an rb25det swap (or 26dett if you're brave). friend is doing it and i wish i had 10k to blow on a project like that =[

edit: on an action i saw....an R33 went for $4k and a prelude SI went for $238 and yeah...wrong forum

 

Well, everyone is pretty much right. MotoReX has the whole legalization of imported cars down to the notation of a lump sum, which isn't bad for someone who wants to drive their RHD car in the US. If you just want to own a RHD car, there are three ways.

1. have the car shipped to Canada, or Mexico, and try to smuggle it into the US, which is damn near impossible. Think of how a Royal Canadian Mounted Police would act towards seeing a RHD Skyline or Silvia, when you pull across the border.

2. Have the car shipped in as a race car. good news: you now have a RHD trailer queen. bad news: you now have a RHD trailer queen. you can never have the car on the road. you can never have it insured. no tag, no title, no chance. and the ultimate bad news?!?! after one year of ownership, the car must be destroyed. no exceptions. some kinda importation emissions law, or something. I can't remember.

3. Have the car imported by MotoReX, and be registered as a RHD mail car. two guys in GA have RHD cars that I conversate with very often. Chris Weeks, and Tripper Cook. Chris owns a RHD Mugen Civic Type R, while Tripper owns a R33 Skyline GT-R. They both have the same complaints, as far as driving a RHD car in the states. getting on an interstate onramp requires EXCELLENT pilot/copilot comunication skills. LOL!!

 

I'm as big a JDM fan as there can be, mainly because it is a clean look. But the reasons behind wanting to drive a RHD car in the U.S. eludes me. I mean if its a car like the Skyline that only is available in RHD that's one thing, but a Civic makes no sense. Stuff a Type R motor in your SI and call it a an R. It doesn't make sense to go through all the hassle of legalizing the car (or paying extra for a legal one) and then be inconvenieced by something you poured lots of coin into. I just don't get it

 

just get a LHD skyline from a european nation that has LHD cars.......

 

strange thing is, Chris bought his car totalled out in Japan, had it sent over for salvage, then had it repaired with a salvaged title, and registered it as a mail car. so, its a totalled out, salvaged, RHD Civic Type R mailcar with every Mugen part ever made for the EK9 hatchback.

 

i saw tripper cook at the hot import nights in atlanta...funny thing is he lives probably within a 30 minute drive of me, and thats being very conservative.

CWestAccord: is there anyway i can get in contact with him? i would love to talk to him about the skyline, etc. beautiful car

 

no prob. http://www.midgatuners.com is the forum he frequents all the time, and his SN is Godzilla. he's very down to earth, and cool as hell. he's like a 25 year old trapped in a 45year old body. and BTW, he's a lesbian. LOL.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by fw190bvi &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">just get a LHD skyline from a european nation that has LHD cars.......</TD></TR></TABLE>

no such thing - skylines were only made RHD...

there is a company in cali and one in russia that does a conversion from RHD to LHD...

conversion starts at 100k ontop of the price of the car...

 

It would just have to do with how much to ship it....

I've heard that to import a Skyline is more to ship than the actual cars costs. But I could be, and probably am, wrong...

 

I dont think its worth it to ship the whole car over unless it one that isnt sold in america like the skyline but for a civic or accord your best bet would probably buy the engine off the internet and then swapp it in. or i dont know if you can buy a car from canada or not but im pretty sure that those are all jdm spec cars just LHD. Im not completly sure though but most of the JDM engines come from canada my friend just bought a SR20DET for his 240 and it came from canada and I know another person who got his Type R civic motor from canada

 

Thinks for the information. Are you sure all of this is 100% true. Will they crush a car. The Skylines may be that expensive and difficult to import but what a car like the Nissan Fairlady Z and the Toyota MarkII?

 

Well, thanks for the info all. I didn't have that much knowledge on it in the first place so this helped me out quite alot as I'm sure it did nitrous36 as well. This has definately opened my eyes on the whole importing a car thing. Screw the car, take the engine. Stuffing a Skyline GTR engine into an Accord would be sweet. haha. Sorry for popping out incorrect info to anyone. I can see it now, an Accord with a "Powered By Nissan" sticker on it. So wrong but so great.