How is this possible?

How is this possible?

Author
Discussion

TargaFlorio

Original Poster:

130 posts

223 months

Monday 26th March 2007
quotequote all
www.flickr.com/photos/kickinrad/166038192/

Has a Tuscan ever been legally exported to the US? I hear you can do it if you get some sort of work done on it by a government-approved garage...where would one begin to look for such info? Or might this lucky Tuscan owner just be someone from the EU who has done a temporary import?

wild

48 posts

267 months

Monday 26th March 2007
quotequote all
Note the plates. He is driving it on a 1 year exemption which you can do on a foreign passport. It isn't US registered car.

TargaFlorio

Original Poster:

130 posts

223 months

Tuesday 27th March 2007
quotequote all
Blast. I remember once though I was reading the DuPont Registry (don't know if you have that in the UK, it's basically a monthly magazine filled with exotics for sale,) and they had an ad for a TVR Sagaris for sale for about $148,000USD. Might have it just been a scam?

wild

48 posts

267 months

Tuesday 27th March 2007
quotequote all
Probably.

There is only one way you can import one of these cars to be registered for street use in the US.

You need to import a rolling chassis. That means importing a car sans engine, but equally importantly one with a chassis that was never sold as a commercial vehicle and VINed in the UK. So if you got the factory to build a car and sell it as a rolling chassis you could import that and install a rebuilt US engine that does have a VIN and transfer that vin to your new 'kit car'.

Alternately you can take an existing car, pull out its engine and chassis both, and if you can find a virgin chassis somewhere in the UK (for warranty work perhaps), you could then call the result a rolling chassis (again no VINed engine or chassis in it, so its considered parts, not a car). Then do the same thing, import it as parts and drop an engine in.

No way though to have imported a Sag with a Speed 6, etc and have it be road legal certified and registered.

brap_brap

753 posts

216 months

Wednesday 28th March 2007
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So how did they manage to get the tiv in the John Travolta movie?
My guess is that it's the same car.

wild

48 posts

267 months

Wednesday 28th March 2007
quotequote all
No.. that one looks to be a different color. Again, foreigners can and have brought them in on one year stints, just not registered them.

I actually am not sure how Hollywood brings them in, perhaps they have someone with a foreign passport import it on a 1 year temporary pass.