Re: importing cars privately.

[Steve An <san@domain.elided>]

Ciao tutti,

My advance apology for raising the question since I am not very informed or 
up to date on this "personal importation" subject, but I am not sure it is 
quite as simple as George stated below? at least in 1987 when I returned to 
the US from an assignment in Germany. I am sure George can point anyone to 
a more reliable source for info (such as the DOT).

I worked for 2 years as a government contractor at Patch Barracks in 
Stuttgart, at the time under the command of no less than General Colin 
Powell, he was just as impressive in those days, but I digress.... I had 
all the privileges granted by the US government to its civil servants. When 
I left in 1987 to move back stateside, the rules at the time were as follow.

1. Cars that were older than 5 years got EPA exempt, only DOT was required, 
you get a once per lifetime exemption and I am not sure if you had any 
resell restriction. A colleague brought back a 78 928 and sold it later.

2. Cars that were less than 5 years, both EPA and DOT compliance were 
required, I brought my 1986 911 back and it cost around $5K for the 
compliance. Everything were handled by the military (AAFES). I had no 
resell restriction and sold the car to my house mate after a while. I had 
to rush my car in because the law changed soon after I did, one of which 
was the requirement of bond triple the value of the car instead of single 
bonding. In both cases, you must own the car for 7500 miles, though no one 
asked since it was handled by the military people.

3. As a diplomatic or foreign national person, one could bring any car 
without doing a thing into this country and register and drive it for only 
one year. You can not resell it.

Around this time, Mercedes Benz (MBNA) was losing a lot of business to the 
gray market importation, which is a slightly different category than the 
above mentioned personal importation, so they sued and got the laws changed 
severely, enough to kill the gray market. Of course, the ensuing weakness 
of the dollar probably had  a lot more to do with that.

Remember, Bill Gates had all sorts of troubles bringing in a 959, it was in 
fact impounded for a while as reported by Autoweek.

Having said this, I did find an unconverted euro spec BMW M635Csi (the 
precursor to the M6) for sale at a local dealer around 1988, with 
absolutely no EPA or DOT and US Maine title. The story was a diplomat got 
the car into the US, somehow got it registered and titled in Maine, 
probably during the moose hunting season when no one was looking, and got 
around the DOT's restrictions, once you get the US title, the coast is 
clear. I had heard that similar thing can be done in Alabama, Texas etc... 
but i reckon things have got a lot more stringent recently.

Currently, another friend here in Boston finally got approval to bring in 
his McLaren F1s (a street and an LM) with OBD2 and all, I'll find out the 
OBD2 details and post it if anyone is curious. He told me it will cost 
about half of what it cost him to bring his first, pre-OBD2 1994 F1 car in, 
which was around 90k.

Caveat emptor and YMMV,

        - Steve.

p.s. George, I am not sure if it is fair to judge any car on the basis of a 
rental car, I had a rental 156 1.9 JD in France for a couple of weeks, it 
was anemic and thus pathetic. I am sure a 156 GTA would have made a far 
different impression.


At 12:51 PM 1/11/2003 -0800, George Graves wrote:


> This car was obviously brought to America by someone emigrating here or a 
> returning US serviceman who bought it for personal transport while 
> overseas. It is legal to bring cars in under both of these circumstances. 
> OTOH, its probably for sale because the  owner found that (1) nobody in 
> the US knew how to work on one and there is no source in this country for 
> manuals, and (2) no parts are available for it in this country. Hence the 
> sale. I looked at it closely on E-Bay, and it looks like a stripped-down 
> "Hertz" version with cloth seats. The 155 wasn't the greatest of Alfa 
> Sedans, nowhere near as well made as the 156 and the 4-cylinder engine is 
> anemic in that car (which is a bout the size and weight of an Accord) 
> making it dog-slow. How do I know? I've driven a similar rental 155 in Europe.
>
> George Graves
> '86 GTV-6
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