The Real Reason Why The Nissan GT-R Skyline Is Illegal In The US
There is an arguably good amount of people who would say that the Skyline is illegal because it’s too fast or because the police can’t catch such a fast car etc. Right… people’s opinion that the skyline is somehow singled out from being legal in the States is definitely not true there are many models that are legal in the US for example.: Toyota Cortina GT, 91-96 Honda Beat, 90-91 Nissan Figaro, Trabant and etc. And by the way the r34 is no where near as fast as the 2016 nismo edition.
In order to understand what’s going on first have to know what a vehicle grey market is. Basically in a nutshell every country has its regulations that call for manufacturers to build cars to certain specifications. The man plays a big role in what vehicles are sold in other countries. I’ll get back to that later. The US has very high standards when it comes to safety and Emissions regulations. In order to certify a vehicle the US standards manufacturers could face upwards of 2 million dollars per model in order to bring it up to US specs.
The practice of importing so-called grey market cars goes way back to when military members realize they could save thousands of dollars by importing a cheaper version of the same car sold in the US sometimes a car that wasn’t available.
People were making out like Bandits and started importing cars so successfully that it started to affect brands like Mercedes Benz. They’ve started a lobby to stop this act ! In 1988 the Motor Vehicle Safety Compliance act was passed insuring that the Nissan Skyline and other exotic vehicles were never brought to shore.
Main points !
1.Too many people were privately importing Vehicles which was undercutting sells in the US .
2. It can cost a lot of money to bring a model to specs.
3.The Nissan Skyline was in low demand in the US until recently.
As hard as is for us to say it the skyline was until very recently a fairly unknown car and for Nissan not worth bringing sports cars like it to the US shores. Think about it, what was the first time you’ve never heard of the Skyline - Gran Turismo, 2 Fast 2 Furious ? Even we, the first time we even heard of the name was in 2001 from this low-budget Japanese film by accident about a guy that drifted a r31 down a Mountainside. At that time we don’t remember too many people talking about it. It was and in some ways it is still one of those cars that’s well known by car enthusiasts but not as mainstream as you would think. The fact that most people care more about the driving configuration and give you a blank stare when you tell them it is a Skyline is strong enough! So basically that’s why we never got the Skyline here and sometimes we don’t have the facts is easy to speculate on why something is the way it is.
In order to understand what’s going on first have to know what a vehicle grey market is. Basically in a nutshell every country has its regulations that call for manufacturers to build cars to certain specifications. The man plays a big role in what vehicles are sold in other countries. I’ll get back to that later. The US has very high standards when it comes to safety and Emissions regulations. In order to certify a vehicle the US standards manufacturers could face upwards of 2 million dollars per model in order to bring it up to US specs.
The practice of importing so-called grey market cars goes way back to when military members realize they could save thousands of dollars by importing a cheaper version of the same car sold in the US sometimes a car that wasn’t available.
People were making out like Bandits and started importing cars so successfully that it started to affect brands like Mercedes Benz. They’ve started a lobby to stop this act ! In 1988 the Motor Vehicle Safety Compliance act was passed insuring that the Nissan Skyline and other exotic vehicles were never brought to shore.
Main points !
1.Too many people were privately importing Vehicles which was undercutting sells in the US .
2. It can cost a lot of money to bring a model to specs.
3.The Nissan Skyline was in low demand in the US until recently.
As hard as is for us to say it the skyline was until very recently a fairly unknown car and for Nissan not worth bringing sports cars like it to the US shores. Think about it, what was the first time you’ve never heard of the Skyline - Gran Turismo, 2 Fast 2 Furious ? Even we, the first time we even heard of the name was in 2001 from this low-budget Japanese film by accident about a guy that drifted a r31 down a Mountainside. At that time we don’t remember too many people talking about it. It was and in some ways it is still one of those cars that’s well known by car enthusiasts but not as mainstream as you would think. The fact that most people care more about the driving configuration and give you a blank stare when you tell them it is a Skyline is strong enough! So basically that’s why we never got the Skyline here and sometimes we don’t have the facts is easy to speculate on why something is the way it is.
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