Anyone shipped a landcruiser to the States?

[spackrackman]

A good friend of mine out of the blue yesterday rang from Boston and asked to help him source an 80 and ship it out to him. Anyone done this with any car to America? Ideally a left had drive one would be better and his only other request was that its a diesel. He said he has a 5 - 6 k budget. I am sure getting the car itself will not be that hard(lhd may be more tricky) it more the cost and whether America has any issues with a large land cruiser appearing on its shores. I had a look on teh American ebay and there are surprisingly few out there. That I was not expecting.
So anyone have any suggestions? costs? contacts? info

Many thanks
Jonnie

 

[Andrew Prince]

It'll have to be LHD - AFAIK (from the regular moaning all over MUD) no RHD vehicles are allowed to be imported into the US. Canada allows RHD vehicles older than 15(?) years in, hence some JDM diesel 80s are seen there. I would think you might battle to get a reasonable LHD diesel 80 from the continent and get it to the US at that budget, even double that might be a big ask...

Cheers,

 

[pugwash]

25 year rule would make it MUCh easier

(basically you can import anything over 25 years old- before that- well have fun!)

 

[spackrackman]

Thanks for that, I never knew about the no RHD. Learn something new everyday, I had a quick look on Ebay.fr and they were expensive! I may have to relay the bad news to him!

 

[callum]

i don't think right hand drive is a problem. you'll find plenty of postal workers drive right hand drive vehicles daily.

you'll fall foul of the 25 year rule though. no 80's the right age yet. not impossible to work round this, but very difficult/expensive.

 

[Andrew Prince]

i don't think right hand drive is a problem.

No-one's saying that - it's the importing of RHD cars into the US that's the problem

 

[Andy Harvey]

A good friend of mine out of the blue yesterday rang from Boston and asked to help him source an 80 and ship it out to him. Anyone done this with any car to America? Ideally a left had drive one would be better and his only other request was that its a diesel. He said he has a 5 - 6 k budget. I am sure getting the car itself will not be that hard(lhd may be more tricky) it more the cost and whether America has any issues with a large land cruiser appearing on its shores. I had a look on teh American ebay and there are surprisingly few out there. That I was not expecting.
So anyone have any suggestions? costs? contacts? info

Many thanks
Jonnie

Jonnie.

He might be better to get one from Canada - can get ones into the US from Canada I think. There's a guy on MUD - Crushers (Wayne Smith) who imports into Canada quite a few - www.luxuryimports.ca or www.crushersrule.com.Would also be cheaper probably as the importation has been done and it's cheaper for a business to bring in a couple a time than one at a time as you would probably need to pay for a whole container rather than a part one and I think you can get a couple of 80 series plus loads of parts in a single container. Might be worth him a call to Luxury Imports. Wayne's a decent chap too, have shipped him a few parts over in the past when he needed bits that were easy to get in the UK but hard to get in Canada.

 

[callum]

haha, let me put this another way, importing rhd cars is not a problem either

http://www.copleymotorcars.com/land_rov ... vo847.html americans have been enjoying getting their hands on UK land rover 90's and 110's since they passed the 25 years old mark. i wish my 110 was worth that much.

as i said though, i have my doubts as to whether you'll be able to get round the 25 year rule. as i understand one way of doing this is importing a front chunk of a diesel landcruiser and grafting it on to the rest of a US landcruiser, then using the identity from the US landcruiser.

its not easy and that's why the RHD cruiser owners on mud are almost all canadian (they have a 15 year rule, although bizzarely it seems rhd cars are being outlawed in some area as they are too dangerous. Perhaps they are not familiar with the little old place called 'Europe' such driving is rather common and without issue). If it was easy there would be far more imported.

 

[Andy Harvey]

Yeah and they obviously have a different view of dangerous. Driven through Toronto many a time at rush hour and to be honest it's not that much different than Cairo

It's probably down to pressure from the good ole US of A into protecting jobs in the home auto industry - in the end a few of the Auto makers have quite big plants in Canada.

Yes getting a US FZJ 80 and grafting on a half cut is a reasonable solution and is reasonably common. Also if you are in the market for an older vehicle you can get 40s and 70s that were brought in officially into Canada for the mines and they come up for sale now and then. Reasonably easy to get those into the US as "North American" vehicles - LHD too.