Iporting j-spec cars?

[Ryuuko]

Does anyone in this forum have information and or websites on importing Silvias to the US?

[J SPEC SilEighty]

Hehe, I've been researching this subject for awhile now because I would like to do this one day. To get one to the US, your going to have to go through an RI (Registered Importer) Here's a list of registered importers that can get the car here for you. You will have to find a shipping company to bring the car from where ever its coming from still. Then once the car gets here, it is going to have to agree with DOT and EPA specifications and that's where the RI comes into play. The RI changes everything necessary on the car that is going to make it legal here in the US. But the hard part is going to be finding an RI that is willing to work on the silvia. They may not work on it if there is no car here in the US that they can get parts from to replace on the silvia so that would mean more custom work would have to be done. I guess it would sort of depend on what model silvia you got because if it was the S13 or S14, then we have S13 and S14 240SX's which you will be able to get some parts off of. I've e-mailed several RI's and asked them for an approximate cost on converting the silvia to US standards, and all of them that have responded to my emails have told me that they will most likely not work on the silvia but if they did decide to work on it, I should expect to pay close to $9000 to have it converted to DOT and EPA standards. Here's another thing that is going to make the cost rise greatly.... The RI's told me that since the Silvia is not on the Vehicle Eligibility List, that it is not legal to be driven on US roads. They say that for it to be legal and driven on US roads, you will need to get the crash test data for the silvia that your importing. To get the crash test data, your going to have to talk Nissan Japan into giving that to you, which I don't think they will. The crash test data is very expensive. Motorex was once selling their crash test data for the Skyline GTR for 1 Million, yes 1 Million dollars. This data would come in handy if another RI wished to import skylines and they would already have the crash test data to present to DOT. RI's have told me that if you can't get crash test data anywhere, you have to import at least 1 more car of the same make/model/year to be crash tested. They said that still may not be enough information to let the car in. If you are importing a car that has a similar version in the states, then that should help with the crash testing. An RI gave me an example of this and they said that if I wished to import a civic, then it would be rather easy because of all the crash test data from the US civics are almost identical. When you bring the car to the US, it will need to have the HS-7 form along with it completely filled out. you can get that here You can also bring the car into the US for show/display purposes and you are still allowed 2000 miles on the road each year, but this wouldn't really be any fun because then you cant drive the car that you worked hard to get. you can find out about importing for show purposes here.

I can't think of anything else right now but if I do, then I'll post it.
I hope that helped a little bit