How A Regular Guy Imported A Nissan Skyline R34 GT-R Into The US LEGALLY | 23GT

hello everybody so here i am driving my nissan skyline r34 gtr that have newly imported some of you have seen my previous videos or been on my blog may have been wondering how i managed to pull off acquiring the most notorious jdm car on the planet when they're supposed to be illegal here in the united states of america some of you who live in more enlightened countries where jdm isn't necessarily a four-letter word may have been wondering what all the fuss is about well in this video i'm gonna explain how i managed to import this lovely beast with a little help from some friends but before i do any more explaining i should probably park up before some guy who's busy texting dirty selfies his girlfriend plows into me [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] so here it is the nissan skyline r34 gtr a car i've lusted after ever since i was a pimply kid playing gran turismo 2 on the playstation this was the car that firmly cemented my love for nissans back then it blew my mind because there was nothing else like it i mean look at it it doesn't even look like any other car years ago sports car international magazine described the r34 styling as ballistic refrigerator for the blockiness that belied its utter speed it doesn't sound very flattering and most people probably would agree that the r34 lacks the sexiness of some slinky mid-engine exotic but for me that's its appeal this was a car that wasn't built to appeal to the masses it wasn't built to fit convention this was nissan going its own very japanese way they wanted to build a fast car that would shame more expensive and exotic rivals but instead of going the more conventional route of making some small low slung lightweight two-seater fillet knife to cut through the air like butter they built this big hulking mean sledgehammer of a car that could beat physics into submission and scare the crap out of three lucky passengers it's basically a japanese car engineer's wet dream of a muscle car big grill long hood these rippling bulges in the sheet metal like a bodybuilder's biceps personally i think the styling has aged very well the muscular angularity of it looks contemporary enough now that it's amazing to think it was designed back when the macarena was still considered cool but in typical japanese fashion it wasn't dumbed down it had all-wheel drive twin turbos four wheel steering and a carbon fiber diffuser in the rear before carbon fiber became so common that they started making toilet seats out of it now the japanese are wonderfully polite and conservative people which makes the r-34 all the more fascinating because there's nothing polite or conservative about it this wasn't a car for people who want to be simple cogs in the corporate machine this was a car for guys who burst out their front door in the morning saying i'm going to be a space pirate that distinctiveness is a key reason why this car is becoming ingrained in the collective consciousness as paul walker's hero car and the fast and the furious franchise he drove many cars in the six movies he starred in but the ones people remember the most are the two r34s in short this is import car royalty as a normal well kinda normal totally average guy i feel very lucky to have taken ownership of one of these okay so before i can explain how the importation happened i need to explain why this car would normally be illegal in the first place it all starts with a little thing called the 25-year rule or as it's more properly known the imported vehicle safety compliance act of 1988. see the 1980s was a lawless time where drug use was rampant people made questionable fashion choices and dance music was all the rage kind of like today actually but back then anyone could bring in a car from overseas and for a relatively small cost get it legally imported into the usa at the time this was actually big business because a strong dollar favored someone buying a foreign car like a mercedes in germany and after shipping it over and getting it legalized you could still save money over buying one from a stateside dealer to do the process legitimately though you had to get the car converted to meet federal safety and emission standards unfortunately although there were many companies that digit did it legitimately there were also a lot of unscrupulous ones who didn't some certified vehicles as having airbags that weren't there while others mounted catalytic converters in spots that were so close to the gas tank that you could go kaboom if a squirrel jumped on the car and so on and so forth aside from the danger of all this poorly done compliance work these gray market imports were costing the foreign car companies big money by 1985 it was estimated that mercedes usa lost out on an estimated 300 million dollars in profit from people turning to grey market imports in 1985 alone there were twenty thousand marks that came in as part of the sixty thousand grey market imports that year naturally mercedes didn't like the monetary loss and the bad pr that the slap shot compliance work could give them so they lobbied hard for the government to restrict these unofficial imports that resulted in the imported vehicle safety compliance act and that's how we got the 25 year rule basically in 1988 it was decreed that any car less than 25 years old had to meet stringent new certification standards including crash testing a few examples before it could be legally imported it's because of the 25-year rule that technically this car would still be legal since it's a 1999 and therefore only 21 years old now there were a few skylines imported back in the early 2000s by a company called motorex based in california they actually did go through the process of crash testing and establishing a set of modifications to make them comply to federal standards but after their early success they kind of fibbed a little on their paperwork just a little see they tried to claim that this r33 skyline which they had crash tested was basically the same as these r32 and r34 skylines which they hadn't as anyone with a pair of eyes can see they're different cars i mean this one is blue while the others are gray but motor x claimed they basically were so whatever safety modifications applied to one applied to all of them the feds initially took motorex's word but they got suspicious when they learned the company was releasing cars to owners without actually completing the proper compliance work and that meant motorx's license was pulled the owner was hit with criminal charges and a fast and the furious movie's worth of cars was confiscated the whole story is fascinating but way too long to discuss here in detail so if you want to know more check out the article on motor x posted on my blog at the link in the video description to prevent a repeat of the motorex fiasco the department of transportation announced a revised ruling on the legality of skyline imports and said only the r33 could still be imported if the proper process was followed a few r-32s and r-34s that had made it in were allowed to stay though because they had been allowed by the government to be released to their owners prior to the new ruling those few motor xr34s were the only legal ones in the u.s at least until a few years ago you see there's another way to import cars into the us before they turn 25 without all the messy crash testing and extensive modification work that method is called the show or display law under the terms of show or display a vehicle can be imported into the usa even if it can't be modified to fully comply with federal motor vehicle safety standards if it's considered historically or technologically significant enough to merit display to the general public that last part about the general public is important because the general public doesn't exactly give a rat's ass about that mitsubishi minika you want to import just because you met your soulmate in it but that's because you and i are regular schmoes now on the other hand if said mitsubishi minika was owned by some famous dude like oscar-nominated actor ken watanabe and he met his soul mate in it maybe you might have something especially if it got eaten and spat out by godzilla oh but the car has to be fairly rare too generally no more than 500 must have been made so i guess that means we're not going to see ken watanabe sex machine on these shores after all and that makes me sad anyway the shore display law started out thanks to some guy named bill gates who apparently did something important enough to let him afford a porsche 959 a technological tour de force that was the fastest production car on the planet when it was introduced in 1986. unfortunately porsche never got around to certifying it for sale in the us so when mr gates had his ship to san francisco customs slapped a big nip on it and it stayed in a bonded warehouse for years unable to sample the open road and fly its german freak flag high on american highways that is until mr gates decided to go to washington and throw money at the problem after making it rain in the halls of congress and unleashing a pack of rabid lobbyists on several politicians bill got his wish and an amendment was passed to the import regulations in 1999. now you could bring in a car without sacrificing a few examples to the great god uncle sam for crash testing and then figuring out how to modify it to meet safety standards in order to import through shore display though you had to first apply to the department of transportation and convince them that the car has that all-important historical or technological significance maybe the car was the first one to have integrated gps navigation maybe it was the ferrari that pope john paul ii used to vanquish evil in his exorcist days or maybe it was the first one to be upholstered in chupacabra leather whatever you had to convince the dot of its awesomeness once you did that it got put on a short list of cars that had their blessing for import and that's how this car made it here to the land of the free years ago some genius who remains unnamed successfully applied to the d.o.t for the nissan skyline r34v spec early model limited edition to be included on the shore display approval list there was only one problem with that there was no r34 officially known as an early model limited edition the approval had been granted as far back as 2007 but if it was ever used to actually import an r34 it happened in secret at least until 2016 when two different importers unconnected with the original petitioner figured out what kind of r34 an early model limited edition actually was as it turned out it was one of these a 1999 midnight purple 2 v spec they were a special edition for the first year of the r34 generation of gtrs and we're supposed to be limited to 300 units although nissan actually made 282 v specs plus another 64 of the regular models because i guess mats work differently in japanese we can take an educated guess though that the original petition succeeded because of the mp2 being a limited version of a new generation of such a technologically advanced performance car so if the midnight purple 2 cars were on the approval list since almost a decade and a half ago why didn't we hear of a flood of these cars entering well before now especially when everyone in his brother wants one well it comes down to another thing you need in order to import a car to the united states emissions compliance show or display is a dot program and exempts a car from conforming to safety standards before it turns 25 years old but emission standards are a whole other kettle of fish the environmental protection agency is an entirely separate entity from the d.o.t and allows an exception for older cars as well but they have to be at least 21 years old before that they have to comply with the mission sanders and there is no exemption system even for cars of significant merit that means that even if you had one of these midnight purple 2 cars before now 2020 you had to have it modified to meet epa standards which is a very expensive and time-consuming process two importers did attempt it back in 2016 but between the two rivsu imports of florida and international vehicle importers in california only four cars were known to have made it in and of those four three ended up in a long legal battle when rivsu went belly up and the owners allegedly tried to scam business partners and clients out of their money eventually all four cars did get approved but only after years of work and significant costs which didn't finish until 2018 at the time the going rate to get an r34 converted was approximately 30 grand on top of the substantial cost of the vehicle which was around 80 grand for a decent example back then the ripsu cars probably cost a whole lot more than that once all was said and done because of the legalness that followed the saga of these earlier imported mp2 r34s is also a long but interesting story and if you want to know more i put links to my articles on them in the description as well which brings us to my car i actually first found this car in december 2016 when a friend mentioned he knew a guy from canada who had an mp2 r34 for sale i met the previous owner who i will refer to as mr slowly for reasons at the very first rsd skyline meet held at laguna seca and he turned out to be a cool guy unfortunately the finances didn't work out then since i was in the middle of rebuilding my r32 skyline that i just bought the year before and whose engine had recently decided to file for divorce in the end that actually worked in my favor because if i had bought this r34 then i'd have gotten tangled up in the rip zoom mess since i had been in touch with them to legalize the car if i purchased it fast forward to march of 2019 and i'm shooting the breeze at carson coffee with a friend of mine talking about jdm imports we were chatting about a particular east coast importer when we saw a nissan auto suphero on their website the price was cheap enough and i'd always liked the a31 safiro since i was a kid so i gave serious thought to buying this one while researching it online though i again ran into the friend that had introduced me to to mr slowly back in 2016. he happened to mention that this car was still for sale it turned out senor slowly had decided to keep it but was now wanting to sell it again i realized that if i bought the car it would be less than a year until it turned 21 and could enter the country without any emissions compliance work after getting back in touch with mr slowly i flew up to vancouver a few weeks later and we worked out a deal where he gave me his old jalopy in exchange for all my savings at least my savings also covered him kindly kindly hanging onto the car until it was legal and earlier this year i applied to dot for import approval the applications process took a long time there were obscure things in the application that i needed help with but thankfully because i previously bought an x-shore display nismo r32 in 2015 i had the connections to get the info thanks to sean morris the owner of international vehicle importers now known as top rank importers and a fellow prospective mp2 importer named mike i was able to figure out the process and fulfill the slightly complicated requirements unfortunately the process took longer than expected instead of getting approval as soon as february of this year the approval letter didn't arrive until april when we were already well into the throes of covid and the canadian border no longer welcomed american schmucks like me who just wanted to sneak over and retrieve something trivial like a rare japanese car plan a had been for me to drive up to canada with a buddy or two schlep the car into a trailer handle the custom stuff myself and haul my new baby back to arizona with the border closed my planned epic road trip turned into a quick scramble to hire a customs broker and a commercial car shipping company to do the job instead thanks to jones and jones customs brokers and tfx international vehicle transport my car did make it down in may just in time for my birthday too and here she is on r34 skyline gtr legally imported by some random unknown dude me no questionable means needed and without the benefit of an unlimited bankroll funded by illegal narcotics money laundering and the sale of vcr stolen off a moving semi wow that was a long spiel and that's just a summary of what it took to import this amazing car if you'd like even more detail on everything possibly to acquire one of these for your own follow the links to my blog where you'll find more in-depth articles on the shore display process i only have part one of my show display guide up right now but i'll go through the whole thing with more posts in the future but before you go i have one little request if you found this video interesting helpful or just a little bit amusing please consider hitting the like button subscribing or even just leaving a comment here or on the blog my blog and youtube channel are entirely labors of love i don't make a cent off of them and i don't honestly feel i really need to i'm thankful i have a full-time job in healthcare that pays my bills and helps speed my car habit along with a few other hobbies that people would laugh at if they knew how obsessive i am about them so i'm not some youtuber looking to make it big and paint his skyline pink then slap a digitized dog sticker on it i'm just a guy standing in front of a car telling you how much i love it i just love gtrs and nissans in general and i love talking about them and spreading knowledge about them as well as other stuff i'm really into unfortunately it's a lot of work to create content that's up to the standards i want to have and it can feel like too much work sometimes hearing your comments or seeing people giving a like or choosing to subscribe helps me know there are people out there who appreciate the effort so i would love it if you could take a moment and let me know that you're digging this stuff and with that thanks for watching and drive safe everybody oh and keep chasing your dreams because if a regular nor me like me can do it anyone can now it's time to go space pirating sayonara hello everybody here i am driving my nissan skyline r34 gtr aimlessly try and record video without creating bloopers it's contemporary enough now that it's amazing to think it was designed back when the macarena was still considered cool [Applause] this video i'm [Music] it's basically a japanese engineer's web dream of a muscle car [Music] or maybe it was the first one to be upholstered in chupacabra whatever in order to do that though you have to first apply to the department of transportation and get approval to bring it in why did you forget [Music]

Channel: 23GT

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Id: J1vpzblBHWA

Length: 23min 29sec (1409 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 01 2020