So how much would you charge me to get a 99 FD

 

I'm still trying to figure out how I'm gonna import one for myself!

unfortunately, if you click the link you'll see that I cant actually sell it to you. You would have to join the military get stationed overseas in Japan or Okinawa or Europe, and do it yourself

 

Of course you also have to be a RI (registered importer) which requires owning a shop actually knowing what your talking about and sending in an 8mm video of your shop...

People just swap the vins from another one and drive a brand new FD, if it doesn't pass emissions learn a little bit about emissions and emission control devices and make it pass. I have swapped vins before and its no big deal, the cars are just about identical anyway.

 

welcome to the internet

 

Now, there's an intelligent statement

 

You dug up a 3 year old thread.

And telling people to learn about emission systems and making it pass....doesn't do anything to help someone. That's exactly like the newbs that come on this forum...telling others to just look under the car to find out what is wrong, instead of giving any useful info that may help them.

Telling people to swap vins...is still illegal the last time I checked.

 

So if 1 person got an FD from japan payed all the money to get it threw customs, then used it to be crash tested and it passed. Would that mean that you could then import then if you got them threw customs? Would you still have to do customs? And then it would be legal becuase its been crash tested. just wondering

 

Simply running the car into the wall doesn't make it legal to import them. The car has to "pass" the crash tests and meet US DOT requirements (lighting, bumpers, safety equipment, emisssions, etc). Everything you do then to make it pass, you then have to do to EVERY car imported to make it legal.

And it generally takes more than one car for the various crash tests. Think about smashing up 5-6 FD's if they pass all the tests on the first try. If not, changes need to be done and the test redone. It's an expensive process which is why MotoRex charged so much for Skylines.

 

Crazy! And to think most of us (me included) couldn’t even afford red-rx7's 3 rotor. I'd personally rather have that then a 2000 bone stock FD. You'd have to sell allot of newer model fd's at 30 to 40K to make up for that many crash tests.

 

I guess there's one good aspect of resurrecting this fossil from deep in the bowels of the forum: Maybe it'll keep someone from posting yet another "RHD, JDM, is it worth it, aren't I cool?" thread...

 

Only other true way to legally import the car is to be a Dealer. With a Dealer's license you can have the car for up to 3 years I think and drive it on the street. After that it must be destroyed, exported, or used for track/off road use only.

 

Damn you can get a POS none maybe running FD to crash test thats still all in one piece for about $2k, and crash test it if your feeling froggy...

 

Basically, you will have to import the car as a parts car (Salvaging the title and no chance for registration) and then just swap every single part over to a valid 93-95 US LHD shell. That way, you have a brand new up-to-date FD with only an old shell. You can register it as the same 93-95 US FD (per US the vin) and get the regular 93-95 US FD emissions test. You will want to us US glass in the car though, because it has a serial number or some etching that shows it is US shatterless safety glass (an **** cop might just check for that validity).


That would be the only most legal way to have a 96-up JDM FD driving on the US streets.

:EDIT: Without doing the exspensive crash tests and conversions to a LHD car of course.

 

Damn if your going to do all that, why not just cut out the VINs and info they check (US model) and put it on the imported (J-Spec) model.?

 

Well, the question is not how to do it "illegally", but how to do it "legally".

 

i dunno this might of been covered already......but i know someone locally who has a JDM Del Sol, all he did was take the vin # off of a trashed US del sol and register it as that one. i know its shady but imho i don't think u'd ever get caught, no cop is gonna be smart enough to tell a 99 jdm rx7 from a 93 us spec rx7 with a rhd conversion.

 

the consequences for such a course of action out-weigh the benefits of having the car in my opinion. the vin number is plastered all over the car, not just the dash board. Cops are smart.

 

i realise this, but its not out of the question imho. when has a cop EVER looked at your car other than the vin on the registration and on the dash when u get pulled over? let alone the dmv, they never look at cars at all. obviously if u bring over somthing like a skyline then yea, they've prolly heard of it and are gonna get curious. but an rx7 to an rx7, much like the del sol to del sol, wouldn't raise any suspicion

 

I was being scarastic hehe...

 

Unfortunately, we have a VERY impressionable youth on this forum.