25 year import rule has to go. Please read.

Ferrarri Owners and Fans,

As many of you know, cars must be over 25 years old in order to be exempt from DOT and EPA Standards and imported into the USA privately.

There is another effort to address this non-sense rule that has been organized by Petrolicious. Specifics on this effort can be found here:

Petrolisti Unite! Time to Rewrite a Foolish Law | Petrolicious

If you are willing please sign, the petition can be found here at Whitehouse.gov:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/repeal-dotepa-“25-year-rule”-car-import-ban-15-years-and-allow-importation-non-conforming-cars-and/PhZ4RMgz

We are a little over 50% in the signatures count needed to receive a response from the administration. If planets align and this is adopted, it would open the door to several cars that we are simply not allowed to have currently.

Thank you for taking the time to help out. Feel free to forward this to anyone that would be interested, or even post another forum topic.

 

I admire the initiative, but the truth is the US does have stricter safety standards -- i.e., Lotus Elise/Exige can't meet US regs. So, how do you make an Elise compliant with our laws? Might be impossible. Likewise, as soon as China starts dumping cheap polluting cars in America and undersells Ford and GM, who have to comply with our laws, no one will be happy.

And, what will your insurance bill look like for a Tata Nano if God forbid you happen to hit something big like a Schwinn?

So, interesting, but they haven't really thought it through.

I agree with his proposal for global crash standards, but the likelihood of that happening is low to nil.

 

Actually it's the US that is packed with old heaps, average car age is now something like 15 years in America.

Regardless whitehouse.gov petitions are a joke.

 

Not sure where the 'old heaps' reference comes from. I didn't see that in either the initial post or the article it links to.

That said, I don't see the point if this petition/rant. It seems to imply that in the US we cannot import any car, if any type, from anywhere until that car is at least 25 years old. If that is the starting premise for the argument, I'm sorry but it simply isn't true.

Cars that meet the NHTSA requirements can easily be imported to the US, regardless of age. I have done it. (And if I can figure it out....)

The restriction is on cars that do not meet the NHTSA standards. Those must be upgraded on import to meet those standards. If seat belts were a requirement in the US when the car was made, you cannot bring it into the US without installing seat belts, for example. That's an easy one, if course. But then it gets more complicated with items like emission controls, bumpers, airbags, and other things that are just too prohibitively costly (or impossible) to modify.

Again, applaud the thought, but not the execution. Changing the age exemption is not going to address the root of the question.

 

I would love to know in which way the thousands of cheaper Ferraris laying in Europe are different from the absurdly costly ones who have in USA and why cant they be imported.

 

Not in Texas. If the average is over 5 years I'd be shocked.