Feds + Skylines = LOL

[gingervette]

Feds Begin to Seize Illegal Nissan Skyline GT-Rs in California

 

Imported specialty cars are no rare thing in the U.S. Collectors all across the nation have been shipping in rare automotive gems for decades. Laws regarding foreign-market car shipped into the U.S. aren't taken lightly, though, as several Nissan Skyline owners are finding out.

 

Making a splash on the Web today is the plight of some Southern California-based previous-generation Nissan Skyline GT-R owners who've found out they're being targeted by Federal authorities for driving illegally registered vehicles. The cars were imported using loopholes in customs laws regarding automobiles and automobile parts and now that the Feds have caught wind of it, they're shutting it down quick.

 

According to some owners, at least two R34 series Skyline GT-Rs and one R32 have already been confiscated by officers. Many more cars, they speculate, will be receiving a similar fate.

As the story goes, many of the California Skyline GT-Rs have been imported by a company called Kaizo, which has for a number of years made a profitable business out of importing individual GT-R shells and drivetrains, presumably to be sold for parts.

 

Upon delivery of the components, the company reassembled the GT-Rs and several owners have registered the cars as "kit cars" under a California-specific Specially Constructed Vehicles (SPCNS) 4750.1 title. The title is fairly rare -- only 500 permits per calendar year are issued -- and grants a 'Specially Constructed Vehicle' a highly desired smog exemption. Legal details are many, but essentially, a "kit car" by law cannot resemble the vehicle its components are based on. Additionally, the engine used must be California-legal. Previous-generation Skyline GT-Rs were never sold in the U.S. and do not meet either EPA or DOT regulations. That's two strikes against the reassembled GT-Rs, and registering the cars may have been what brought them to the Feds' attention.

 

It seems the Feds have had enough with the shady importation and titling procedures and have begun their sweep on illegally titled, assembled, and publically-driven Skyline GT-Rs. According to the Feds, the vehicles have violated both EPA and Department of Transportation law as they have neither been crash-tested or smog-approved per Federal mandates and will therefore be confiscated. So far, the confiscations have all taken place in Southern California where the local branch of the U.S. District Attorney's office has been handling the case. If the Feds learn the whereabouts of any GT-Rs imported to other states, it's possible they could be confiscated as well.

 

If you happen to be wondering what the big deal is, pristine, low-mileage Skylines GT-Rs can go for a pretty penny that's usually close to the six figures. Also, other states have been known to be more lax on their emissions regulations, so if you know of 10 Skyline GT-Rs running around in your town, you most likely live in one of those states.

 

Check back for more as the story unfolds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

While I do not feel sorry for the owners since they knew their cars were illegal, I seriously think the American Feds have more important things to worry about. Just show's how wonderful America really is, doesn't it?

 

 

 

 

[t.]

I've never understood this. Why is the GT-R (pre R35) outlawed? I can't honestly believe it is an emissions based issue, not in a country famed for building pick up trucks that do 8mpg and are firmly installed within the "American dream". I know some states also insist on a car being LHD before it is street legal but.. it seems ever so petty in the grand scheme of things.

 

Do I feel sorry for these guys? No, they knowingly broke the law.

Do I feel this law is stupid? Yes.

[Mb]

You think they don't have anything better to do?

 

Come to Holland and see what the cops do here, you're going to think they are all mentally retarded.

[Jacob]

If you Legally Import a GT-R and register it who cares lol its just a car....

 

Its a pretty Big ..... Moment

 

But No Big Deal here as long as there registered they dont care i can count like 4 that good around

[HawkeyePierce4077]

For us here in Canada, all cars imported from countries other than the US MUST be 15 years old or older. Kinda sucks =/

[Jacob]

Uhh Im From Canada and The Newest Skyline is almost 10 years old now :eek:

[Baltoman]

Uhh Im From Canada and The Newest Skyline is almost 10 years old now :eek:

 

 

*cough* r35 *cough*

[zo6dude]

^^*Cough R35 isn't actually a Skyline..Cough*

[Jacob]

*cough* r35 *cough*

 

It Doesnt have Skyline On It So Its Just a GT-R so technically it Isnt Even an r35

[supra_freak]

Well in my eyes the R-34's shouldnt be taken away bc in my eyes they are kit cars bc most of them are reassembled in america so if u think about it its like a kit lol and here is a website where this man got sent to jail for doing all the research and making it possible to get the GT-R's into the states http://www.motorex.net/motorex.html

http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Features/articleId=105699

 

those are just some examples of sites they can have the emissions converted with the right amount of research and work

[CobraDBlade]

I can't honestly believe it is an emissions based issue, not in a country famed for building pick up trucks that do 8mpg

 

Fuel economy and emissions are very different.

 

The emissions issue is that a GT-R that is R34 and older doesn't have a catalytic converter (mandated on all cars sold in U.S. after model year 1975) and evaporative emissions systems while applying to OBD-I (after m.y. 1986) or OBD-II (after m.y. 1995) standards, which are federally mandated to be on all road-going cars sold in the U.S. R34s (and older) can be legally imported into the U.S., they just can't be driven anywhere other than at a race track without having those emissions systems installed. And that's where the problem lies, as it is easy to install a catalytic converter, but not so easy to install the other emissions systems. And what's worse is that cars that are retro fitted with emissions systems have to be fitted with the most modern systems, so there have to be pre and post-cat lamda (O2) sensors, evap systems, EGR (exhaust gas recirculation) systems, etc; and when all these systems are installed the vehicle has to meet California emissions standards (the strictest in the U.S.)

 

The safety standards are another hurdle, since the DOT requires that vehicles sold in the U.S. be tested on (I believe) 27 different types of crashes. This means that a minimum of 27 vehicles have to be crashed for testing purposes. And all those vehicles have to be nearly identically equipped when it comes to drivetrains (diff engines or transmissions = same tests, AWD vs RWD= diff tests, 2 door vs 4 door= diff tests). That's all not necessary if the manufacturer does these tests (meeting DOT standards) in their own labs, but anything not DOT approved has to be tested by the DOT before it can be legally imported as a road going car into the U.S.(and we all know how fast gov't branches gets things done).

[ShadowGT]

Meh.......... A few less skylines on the road in the US ain't gonna bother me. Now if only they'd do that here! Aussie streets are clogged with skylines left right & center.

[TDU 505]

Ha! They're confiscating them so a Paul Walker in the department can go and race undercover and take down some drug lord.

[StrickenHAWK?]

Meh.......... A few less skylines on the road in the US ain't gonna bother me. Now if only they'd do that here! Aussie streets are clogged with skylines left right & center.

Don't forget the lancers!

[Car Freak]

What a completely stupid and pointless law. This is very, very unfair to all owners involved. Not all of them would have known that the car they're driving was imported illegally, particularly in the case of 2nd-hand owners. Now that they confiscate the cars, what next? You can't just take things worth five-figures from people. And don't the feds have better things to do, like taking down wanted criminal gangs and syndicates, instead of taking away the public's cars?

[t.]

Fuel economy and emissions are very different.

-snip-

 

Thanks for that. Rather mind bogglingly complicated routine but I understand what you're saying.

 

So what we learn here is, Europe FTW?

[KoenigseggBG]

Totally the opposite of what's happening here in Bulgaria. Here, a Lambo Murci Roadster was parked on the zebra crossing and the cops just stood there and admired the car. A drunken teenager in a GT3 killed two Austrian tourists and got away cause his dad is a famous politician. A man crashed his Countach into a bank and got away with it, even though the test showed he was drunk...

 

Cops in here are totally powerless to stop any rich people. :facepalm:

[RedCarDriver]

Much of the information in the original post is slightly inaccurate.

 

Kaizo's cars were stripped and rebuilt from the chassis up, to the extent that - in theory - they could have been registered as privately-built replicas once the engine was put in, and thus kit cars before the engine was put in. They were not "sold for parts"; this probably refers to the fact that the car bodies imported were considered whole "car parts" due to the fact that they were basically body panels and shells remanufactured into a new car. Disassembling a car and doing this without performing additional work to the shell is expressly outlawed, but Kaizo had claimed to do work prior to this. (Essentially, what they're doing is similar to what Superformance does with their GT40 replicas - they use original and mechanically identical parts and manufacture replicas, according to their mission statement. They claim to have done enough work to the R34 shells that they qualify as replicas.)

 

The seizure of Kaizo vehicles is probably due to the fact that the government is now seizing all Skyline-based cars it can find, because they have noticed cars slip in through means other than Kaizo or the handful of Motorex exemptions.

 

 

Additionally, the government is no longer accepting petitions for crash tests on R32 and R34 Skylines, because apparently they don't want to "deal with" the whole matter. This is pretty grossly unfair, but the situation is unlikely to change. JK Motorsports, an affiliate of Motorex, has the only copies of the details of the modifications necessary to make two-door R33s comply, so the work would have to be duplicated (a prohibitively expensive process) before R33s could be imported. That said, R33s can be legally imported, in theory.

 

 

 

However, precise information about the matter is difficult to acquire, because the government seems to keep factual information under fairly tight wraps, or at least out of direct public view. There's perhaps one DOT document listing the R33 as importable, and one page stating that Skylines are difficult to import and basically discouraging people from attempting to import them, but many other pages which once existed seem to have disappeared off the face of the Internet. :confused:

 

 

People reporting about this are typically polarized one of two ways:

 

- stating that the cars were illegal, no matter what, and that Kaizo was using a simple import process, and thus the owners got what they deserved

 

or

 

- insisting that Kaizo's cars were legal, and that any car broken up into parts and reassembled is also legal, and thus the entire thing is a witch-hunt.

 

Neither case is entirely true: while importing vehicles broken directly into parts, shipping said parts across the US border, and reassembling the car is expressly outlawed, Kaizo did not do exactly this, as they had claimed to make sufficient modifications to the parts of the car that they kept that they could legally state that they had manufactured the car. Moreover, they could not give customers engines, as that would construe sale of a complete car, which would break the aforementioned regulation. Because they claimed this, owners had reason to believe that the cars were legal.

 

Whether or not they are indeed legal is what's currently under investigation.

[CarFreak]

Imo this is some of the worst bs you can do to a country that wants these cars. Here is America these cars are icons and now we cant even have them. I dont think the government knows how much they could make by letting these cars in.

[ShadowGT]

Imo this is some of the worst bs you can do to a country that wants these cars. Here is America these cars are icons and now we cant even have them. I dont think the government knows how much they could make by letting these cars in.

 

They are not icons at all! They were popularized by the Fast & the furious movies. The skyline was never ever a national icon.

[Jacob]

:eek: @ RedCarDrivers Post. Paragraphs...... :eek:

[RedCarDriver]

Yeah. tl;dr much? :P

 

When things turn to SRS BIZNESS, I tend to do that.