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The mkiv Supra Owners Club

Importing to the USA


al02uk
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Hi all,

 

I know this can be a bit of a touchy subject as the legislation regarding imports to the USA are complex and ancient at best.

 

I may be moving to the USA at the beginning of next year. I was looking at the spec of the UK Supra that I have against the USDM Spec Supra and thought they were very similar, apart for the obvious LHD/RHD changes.

 

My better half currently lives in New York and it turns out that her mother is extremely close friends to one of the top executives at Toyota USA.

 

He said that Toyota's official stance is that they do not recommend importing vehicles to the US for obvious specification reasons.

 

He did, however, offer to carry out a thorough check to see if a UK Supra met the same specification as USDM Supras and if they didn't meet the specification, he would try and find out in what way. He was honest enough to say personally he didn't have a clue what the difference would be, but would certainly have a good go as a favour (my mother in law apparently wrote his daughter a reference to help her get into a university there, so he owes her a favour). I've provided him with a copy of my V5 so he can get whoever he does to carry out the checks.

 

If it meets the standards, he has no problem issuing a certificate of conformity, which would make it a lot easier to import the car.

 

To be honest, it is likely to amount to nothing and I'm sure you know, importing a non conforming car isn't worth it. I'm certainly not expecting it to conform, but I'm more curious now as he was showing interest in this.

 

I thought its worth a try if someone is willing to give it the time of day.

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Good luck, it would cost a fortune to buy a replacement in the states.

 

Tell me about it, its why I thought I'd look at it this way. My head tells me that this has probably been done before though, I mean these things are 20 years old now and the fact that the prices are so high suggests that its extremely hard to do.

 

I have a small glimmer of hope though, that the focus may have been on importing the JDM supra, which definitely doesn't comply.

 

Perhaps the EGR valve would actually come in handy for once.........it seems to be the main focus for the EPA

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Did you check supraforums.com already. There may be some people, who could help or got infos abouit it. As far as I know, there are some RHDs in th US.

 

Yeah I checked on there mate, there is only reference to the JDM imports, I suspect the RHD Supra's have slipped through the net over there.

 

I was going to mention it over there, but people ask about it so much, everyone gets the arse when a post about importing appears because its usually the same questions

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