i understand doing a vin swap is extremely illigal, but how would they be able to tell between swapping the vins and swapping all ur parts over into a Mirage

 

by swapping all the parts, he means to swap out the fenders, engine/tranny/ the rear suspension/exhaust/fenders and appearance parts to the mirage chassis.

If you replaced ALL of the parts, except for the VIN, it's called a ship of theseus fraud which again is illegal.

Your VIN is not just on the dashboard. It's on the dash, the firewall, and various other places on the engine/transmission/chassis.

If the VIN plate didn't match any of these, then he's be busted for fraud.

 

Exactly this, therefore, the discussion on that illegal activity ends here.

 

Thanks for the replies guys -- is breaking it down piece by piece, shipping it with household goods, conforming it to the USA street/road laws, then registering the VIN at the DMV possible?

It's a bit ridiculous that there are Evo's in the states but I can't have earlier generations? It has historical and technoligical significance compared to other Evo's in my opinion..

I'm scattering my brain trying to think of any possible way to get my baby back in the states.. I want to drive it around to car shows, and big car/track day events -- however I don't want to just have it be a trailer car..

 

If you think that's ridiculous you should look up the reason why you can not import cars to the states till they're 25 years old.

Breaking down and reassembling stateside then registering is similar to what you would do with a kit car. I've read that this isn't legal but that's all I read. To determine what is necessary to make it road legal you would likely need to do crash testing and that's not very good for your car.

 

You can not ship as household goods/ personal effects.
It has a market value of xyz, that's what customs is going to hammer you on. Also you need to prove it conforms to EPA regulation, if you wanna register it. Piece by piece is your only option. EPA is going to care that the car runs on unleaded fuel since Europe uses diesel etc. check with a licensed us customs broker for legal advice, this is a grey area of importing. Btw I work for a is customs broker. We don't handle automobiles for importation, only export.

 

If you are a non-resident or returning military you can bring it in temporarily (1 year). Once you have it here, you can figure out how to keep it here. One way or another.
http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/trade/bas...al_vehicle.xml

 

Ive been reading this topic on other places on the net and this is the way I see it. The car needs to be 25yrs or older so you dont have to deal with NHTSA, EPA, and DOT requirements. You can bring it over as a show & display only to be driven 2,500 miles per year, or bring it over as a tourist with the original plates and registration from Japan but only for 1 year. Then again the car will not be legally registered or have a vin #. Motorex crashed many skylines R33's to show the NHTSA that they could pass tests but they dropped the ball with R32's and R34's so USA regulations made them illegal, only R33's can be modified so they can be driven legal in the US but still it costs a lot.

 

Exact thing I was gonna say buy a destroyed Mirage can be worth more than 500 bucks swap the vins keep your Evo VI vins and in 2024 swap them back and Bam Evo VI legal on day one!

 

Lol @ this thread

 

Pretty sure it's nasty difficult my friend to do what you're thinking, come to Canada, you wouldn't have any issues here I've got a VI too!

You could check out this forum (jdmvip.com) , some people there have experience trying to import into the US and had a lot of trouble.

 

It all depends on what state you are registering it in and how thorough they are about the registation process. But the bottom line is all it takes is one cop who knows his **** and you can kiss your car good bye. They will take possession of it and you will never see it again. You will also get locked up for vehicle registration fraud. That's why I lol'ed at this thread earlier. It's not worth it, but I wish good luck to you if you proceed forward with this move.

 

To my knowledge you cannot import a car for road use in the US unless it is over 25 years old. Depending on the state you may have to get it inspected. And on occasion I have heard that you can import a vehicle into the U.S. in parts to get around the 25 year issue but don't quote me on it.