GTR anybody?

[Sapporo Guy]

Ok, was talking with a buddy tonight.
He's been tuning and playing with GTR/GTS/GT4 and definitely likes his Nissan lineage.

He does all the wrench work on my J domestic cars ... he looked at the 911 and said, nahhhh bring me something I like working on not like driving.

Anyway, we were shooting the sheetz and came up with the idea of exporting ... especially older skyline models.

Of course, newer models are more than possible.

I know that this should go over on some rice burner bling bling site but ... that is not really what we were thinking. Something more classy ... but if an interested party were to insist


This partly came up because of 240z thread. lolo, should reverse import those things. $4k on ebay was cheap! More like $12k with loads of rust over here.
But the market and economy sucks ... too much investment sitting waiting for the buyer.


Anyway, what's the PPOT opinion?

[pavulon]

I believe Motorex is/was doing this very thing....not sure how successful it is/was.

[Tobra]

Originally Posted by pavulon

I believe Motorex is/was doing this very thing....not sure how successful it is/was.

not very or they would still be doing it

[onewhippedpuppy]

VERY expensive to import an entire foreign market car that hasn't been certified for the US market. If it were not, there's a huge number of cars that would be flooding to our shores. Motorex did exactly what you want to do with Skylines, and I think they went broke doing so.

On the upside, you can make a small fortune importing Japan-spec parts for Japanese cars, especially the rare stuff. With the current tuner crowd, JDM is gold. There's also some cool stuff for euro cars that didn't make it here, like e-code headlights, different seats, wheels, etc. Anything OEM and unique that didn't sell in the states is worth money on Ebay.

[motion]

I know a guy in SoCal who is importing Skylines. Seems to be doing pretty well

[Komenda Fan]

Sapporo Guy -

Motorex was a legal importer of Skylines into the US. They folded, and it depends who you talk to about why. Some say they federalized the R33, then tried importing R32's and R34's under the same ticket, other people say it had nothing to do with that, and that they were involved in other, shady businesses.

Anyway, it is way way way harder to import Skylines into the US then into Canada, Australia, NZ, or Britain. The US government has to be shown that they are US certifiable, and therefore crash tests have to be done, etc. I don't know, but doubt that you can use the Motorex file. Very few are importing Skylines into the US, and it is frequently said that those that do arrive, are there illegally.

In Canada we have a 15 year exemption, so any car can be imported once it has turned 15 years old. In the Toronto area, we have a lot of R32 GTR's (I debated between the 911 and the GTR, and I may yet pick up an R32). We also have some kei cars, believe it or not. I was talking to a guy a while back who has a Honda Beat, and is working on putting a Suzuki GSXR motor into it!

you can try these sites for more (and better) information -

http://gtrcanada.com/

http://www.gtr.co.uk/forum/upload/

http://tyndago.googlepages.com/home

As you have probably seen, there are a number of companies that specialize in exporting parts/used engines/front clips. A number of guys over there do this to supplement their income as english teachers. Actually, I am contemplating heading back to Japan, in which case, I'll be looking at doing similar.