jfk308

Does anyone know how the 15 year old eligibility rule for imports to Canada is calculated? I'm wondering because as far as I recall the 993 started production in Europe in '93 and Euro deliveries started in Sept. '93. That means some of the Euro cars may be eligible to import here very soon. Do they use the build date, delivery date, or model year designation? Is importing a Euro car any different than importing a Porsche from the U.S. ? Very intriguing.

Imo000

As far as I know importing a car from the US vs. Europe is a totally different process. You should contact either customs or another government agency and ask. Make sure you know for a fact that this car is even eligible to come into this country.
When bringing in from the US they are looking for the model year and not the date of manufacture to determine if the car is over or under 15 years old. I brought my ’85 928 in when it was exactly 15 years (in Feb, 2000) old and it didn’t need the mandatory 45 day inspection or any of the other stuff that a newer than 15 year old car would require.

In any case, ask the proper authority before making any decisions.


I hope this helps!

Crazy Canuck

pretty sure it's model year

Christien

They go by the date of manufacturer as per the month and year stamped on the VIN plate or the NHTSA compliance sticker, and they're VERY strict about it. So if you did the export/import today, a car with a manufacture date of January 1992 would fall under the RIV rules. If it was stamped December 1991, you'd be clear. Wait 15 days from today (i.e. Feb. 1) and the Jan/92 car would be RIV exempt. Model year means nothing to customs, because they know model years are always released in the preceding calendar year. I learned this when I brought the 944 across. The customs agent saw the title was an 83, but didn't care, still had to find the sticker with 5/83 stamped on it to clear the RIV stuff.

Dale Gribble

^ exactly. They do it by date of manufacturer.

Also, i've heard from numerous sources that there may be a revision to the 15 year rule to bump it up to 25 because a bunch of retarded civil servants don't want to deal with Skylines and RHD JDM cars.

I understand that most of you probably couldn't care less about a skyline or an RX-7 but this would also impact collector cars such as rare model ferrari's and porsche's that were never available for sale/import in canada. We're currently organizing a group to lobby that this not be changed and that a more appropriate method of ensuring the saftey of the cars is found rather than an outright ban. I will post more details regarding whome to contact and what our specific objectives are, but we would definitly appreciate it if you guys could write a short letter in defense of the 15 year rule to your reps/to the DOT.

No matter how organized and mature a bunch of 18-25 year old import owners behave, a group of 30-XX year old voting, productive, influential porsche and ferrari owners would definitly help out

cheers

Christien

Yeah, the whole RIV thing is a PITA, especially with the recall letter issue. I've posted ad nauseum here, on Pelican and the UCR forum about how much PCNA, Downtown and Pfaff pissed me off over the whole recall letter issue. Most of my interest is in older cars anyway, but extending the period to 25 years is silly. DFC and Pfaff's unofficial position is that they can't compete with the US prices and won't lower their prices to match, so they're trying to block competition of imports by not allowing recall letters to commercial importers. However, if the period were 25 years, well there's no competition there, because the dealers aren't selling 25 year old cars. Anytime I've been at either of them and seen an SC or Carrera and inquired about it, it's always been a customer car, not for sale.

25 years would impact on the era of cars I'm interested in. My next purchase will hopefully be a 3.2 cabrio, and of course I'll only look in the US, but if the RIV period were 25 years, I might be in trouble.

Omar, definitely post details of who to write. I'll gladly take part.

BimmiN

Yeah, I read about the 15 to 25 year change.They were saying that it was going to be because there is a growing number of RHD cars and that they beleive they are unsafe. Why not just change the laws to stop the legalization of RHD???

Anyways... I checked out Germany for available 993's and it looks like the earliest that was available was built in Spetember of '93. That would mean we are still a year and a half away from bringing them in. The prices dont really make it worth it either... they are too close to Canadian prices. On the flip side there is a wider range of cars available along with some rarer models.

Dale Gribble

if a lot of RHD cars are unsafe, then the shops saftying them should be penalized. there are enough LHD junkers out there too. rust is rust whether its on a LHD or RHD