Importing the Nissan Skyline GTR To the US

http://thisisrace.com/articles/importing-the-nissan-skyline-gt-r/

One may ask why the project explained in the beginning of this article was stopped. The reasons are for impracticality. The return on investment for legalizing the R34 Skyline GT-R simply does not exist. Let’s look at some numbers.

            When the R34 Skyline GT-R came out in 1999, the average cost was 4,998,000 yen. This is equal to about $62,000 US, not exactly a cheap car to begin with. Because only 11,310 were produced, that value has not depreciated significantly because of how well the vehicle proved itself. To find a clean R34 GT-R (not Vspec, Vspec-II, M-spec, etc.) to import right now would run the person importing the car anywhere from $30,000 to $50,000. Just like the third party company did in 1998, the cars must be crash tested and emissions tested. So now we need to destroy about six of these cars just for testing. If we figure about $40,000 for each car, we’re at about $240,000. That’s just the cost of the cars. The import tax must be paid on each vehicle to be imported so that would be about $6000. Now, the cars must be prepped for crash testing and the testing lab must be paid. The reason they need to be crash tested is because they are only right hand drive and will not crash as a left hand drive car. The cars will be crashed, prepped, and crashed again until they pass all sections of the tests just like the DOT tests done in 1998. The cost of the testing minus the cost of the cars will be close to $700,000. Then the EPA tests must be done, this is relatively cheap except the modification part is expensive. After the EPA lab finds what needs to be changed, they must make the necessary changes to pass. Quotes I have gotten range from $20,000 to $50,000 per car. We’ll stick with $25,000 for our calculation. Once the tests are complete the cars will be modified. The cost for each modification for DOT will likely be about $20,000.