You have a VERY nice friend because if you ever had an accident - he would loose his insurance. Dealers are not supposed to be 'lending' plates to non-employees.

 

More than 15 years old is RIV exempt - no drl, no recall letter, no registration with anyone other than mto. Safety and e-test if 1988 or newer. 1987 or older just safety, then register/plate with mto. US customs still needs title 72 hrs in advance, that has nothing to do with age. 25 years or older is duty exempt.

This is the gospel truth, guaranteed.

 

In this case I WAS covered by his insurance but he requested that if something were to happen, that I put it under my insurance, which I had all my bases covered with.

 

That was my experience as well when I brought in my 1986 951 in 2007. (I did pay the duty @ 6.1%, but the car was less that 25 years old at the time...)

 

I'm flying down tonight

 

Thanks Christien, thats great news....I must have misread the rules.

 

Good luck, Buddy! Very excited for you. You waited a long time, worked and studied hard, now you deserve to treat yourself.

 

Not sure if this was already touched on, but when we imported our car back in 2007, we arrived too late at the office on the US side in Lewiston - they had just closed for the long weekend (July 4). Not sure what to do at that point, I called CBSA to talk about options, and to my surprise, they told me to bring the car across, pay the duty/tax, and complete the US portion (and get the final CDN import stamps at a later date).

Because we live in Ottawa, I thought I'd have to hang around in Cambridge for the weekend (no big deal) but then learned that I could effectively complete the process anywhere - so I did the rest of the paperwork (with three days advance notification with title, etc) at Thousand Islands.

I'm sure you won't wind up in the same pinch, but if you get stuck, just call around to determine your options.

Good luck!

Dave

 

Not sure if I shouldn't be posting this, something about letting sleeping dogs lie, but....

When I brought the mini across back in January, I accidentally took the wrong lane and skipped the us export office, going straight to Canada customs. The guy there said we don't care, if you're past the us export office now, don't worry about it.

 

That basically sums up what they said to us at the Canadian side Chris - the only hiccup is that they won't CBSA won't stamp your forms, and MTO won't plate the car without that stamp.

The added fun at the end of my importation story was that the guys at thousand islands didn't stamp the form after I'd seen the US customs guys for the official export clearance...that cost me an extra trip to a CBSA office after getting denied at the MTO. Thankfully I was able to get it done locally at one of the CBSA offices.

 

Hmm, I didn't have a problem. Got everything stamped, and got the car registered with mto with no issues. Could be because I went through the commercial side and used a broker.

Funny story: the really pleasant man at CBSA questioned me on what I declared as the paid value for the car. He googled the VIN and came up with several for sale ads with higher prices. I explained to him I bought it at a dealer auction at wholesale price. He said the for sale ads indicated the car as sold. I said yeah, and obviously not for what they were asking, which is why it went to auction. I had all the paperwork and he seemed pissed that he couldn't make me crack. I was this close to congratulating him on his clearly excellent google skills, and asking him if he wanted a cookie.

 

That would have been hard to explain - my guy decided to bust my b**** because I paid about $3K less than the car was listed for...I had to resist the urge to ask him if he'd ever bought a car before...

 

they told me when I asked what the value in the red book was `sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the book says the 86 944 is only worth 5k, so you overpaid` and he felt bad about it, meanwhile the car is turbo has 60k it, euro gt3 seats, cup car suspension, almost new fiske wheels, big brakes etc...

 

When I brought mine into Canada, I used a shipping company that had a working relationship with a broker.
I sent the broker the required docs well ahead of time, the transport guys brought it across, I picked it up in Hamilton, drove to the DMV which was about 5 min from the shipping company, and got a temporary to drive it home on.
My mistake was feeling pressured to get the safety done and complete the registration in the required 10 days. I took it to a dealer to get what needed to be done, and ended up paying through the nose for things like new front brakes and a new seatbelt.

 

OMG DUDE! Amazing news!!! I'm so excited for you!

Document the whole trip and process!! Good luck man! Can't wait to see your new
911 at the next meet!