Right Hand Drive Seizures in the States
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I've heard about police seizing vehicles that have been improperly imported - that's the nice way of saying smuggling. Not a lot of right hand drive vehicles are permitted for import into the states, and even trying to get those into the states can be a major chore, to the point it's impossible. A while ago I had read about a rash of R33 and R34 GTRs being seized by authorities Check it out here.
So I started to dig around to see if this was a common thing. Turns out that it's not uncommon. The US border guards will seize your vehicle if the proper paper work is not done... like this beautiful R32.
This got me even more curious, so I 'busted out' some 'google fu' to see what I could crop up!
Search term: right hand drive seized
The first thing I found: A Nissan Figaro that was seized when busting a Ponzi Scheme. Sounds like the person busted doing this Ponzi scheme had this in his collection. It's "improperly imported" so it was slated for sale... export only.
Not surprisingly, approximately the same story to the seizures posted on gtrusa.blogspot.com. There is always some degree a rumour to these postings about seizures, but I'm sure there's some truth to them. Here's on from a year and a bit ago: http://www.autoblog.com/2009/10/03/nissan-skyline-gt-rs-seized-in-california-over-possible-illegal/
Surprisingly, the first two pages were almost ENTIRELY USA related. Which is odd, most of the world has LHD/RHD problems, and the USA don't really even allow them to be imported (by and large). Googling "right hand drive impounded" does not have much USA, or even North American info.
Excited by my initial success, I decided to exploring some more: "right hand drive stolen" - A BUNCH of USA posts. Again, weird. I guess they'd really be an interesting can in the states, therefore a target. But again.... the USA doesn't really have RHD cars... so are they all getting stolen, and the all the owners are complaining online?
Then, a fun one: ["right hand drive" illegal] (with quotes around right hand drive). This brought up people from the states asking if it's illegal to drive an RHD. Which in a way it's not. It's just illegal to import them.
Then finally: "right hand drive problems". This brought up a lot of hits from Canada, which makes sense. There was some lots of legal issues still being panned out, and getting parts for RHDs can be... tricky... sometimes.
At any rate, it was an interesting excursion into the fountain of google.
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Rob
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