possible street legal silvia?

[gordonliu]

hey, im new to this forum, but this seems to be a pretty big community so i decided id ask this question.

im pretty sure the main reason why its soo hard to get cars like the skyline and the s15 legalized is because there is no equivalent platform in the US, so that any company willing to undertake legalization has to fork up butt loads of money in order to buy a bunch of silvias and skylines to smash into walls at high speeds to test their safety features and make sure they are up to american specifications, as well as other things like testing emissions (the thing where they put the car inside of the sealed room and test how much gas evaporates out of the gas tank at higher temps), aiming headlights, applying stickers, and other misc stuff.

assuming this is somewhat true, and im not completely wrong, would it be possible to legalize an s13 or s14 silvia? the chassis exists in the US, we know its up to US standards because it was sold here (this is my assumption, that the silvia platform is the same as the 240, aside from the engine and the rhd layout).

lately ive been hearing about several companies who have been legalizing silvias and 180s. this is why i asked, i could be wrong, but it would be very interesting to see.

[thegladhatter]

No You can't legalize a JDM S13 or S14.

It wouldn't even be worth it if you did. Nice cars but...just not THAT nice. You would be talking major $.

[gordonliu]

i dont know if you CANT, ive seen several silvias on ebay that have been issued us vins, and are registered in various states (albeit not CA), and have passed inspections.

in fact i saw a legal S15 with a us vin.

[thegladhatter]

Originally Posted by gordonliu

i dont know if you CANT, ive seen several silvias on ebay that have been issued us vins, and are registered in various states (albeit not CA), and have passed inspections.

in fact i saw a legal S15 with a us vin.

+
I don't think so....NOBODY is doing the S15. (legally)

[gordonliu]

sorry to dig this one up from the depths, but here goes


when i first mentioned that it would be possible to legalize a silvia, what i was specifically referring to was the process by which motorex and now rbmotoring undergo legalization of the r33 skyline (and prior r32 and r34)

basically in order to gain a license to import and legalize a grey market vehicle you will have to undergo the same amount of testing that any other manufacturer must adhere to in order to have their cars legal by dot and epa standards

this includes, but is most likely not limited to:

crash testing
emissions testing
tests related to the level of your headlights
etc


how did motorex and/or the people from motorex who now work at or sold their information to rbmotoring pull this off?

they bought some skylines, brought them over, crash tested them and did all the rest


they now charge upwards of 20,000 bucks to legalize a skyline (now only r33)





silvias are muuuuuch cheaper than skylines. look on ebay or on the net and you find hundreds of sources of clips and front ends for silvias. they are dirt cheap in japan.


someone could go to japan, buy a bunch of silvias, do all the testing, spend a bunch of money, and get the cars legalized for sale in the united states.


it is doable. it was done for skylines. its going to be HARDER now, because the DOT already had to deal with the shitstorm that was associated with motorex. that is one of the reasons why you cant currently legalize r34 or r32 gtrs. also motorex was basically doing nothing to the cars that they brought in.


there are basically 2 types of people in the car world.

people who build it themself

people who buy it already built



there is a huge untapped market for people who WOULD drive a silvia if it was

1: legal
2: easy


if you can slap a 5,000 premium on an imported rhd silvia, people would buy them.

[xcusememisswyn]

what a useless post

[S13Driftfiend]

i second that

[slideways...]

hey if thats true, that means i can always import my OTHER dream car!!!

[S13Driftfiend]

DAYUMMM straight up jdm with almost as much torque as my lawnmower.

[nissan_240sx]

hahah

/thread lock

[jon@af]

Thank you for that. Please don't bring back threads because of a scheme you devised yourself that is outlandish to anyone but those who have a substantial bankroll.