Death Of The Skyline GT-R
Say it ain't so . . .
A few days ago while browsing the Internet, I stumbled upon a disturbing letter written by the U.S. Department of Justice that will undoubtedly affect bootleg Skyline owners throughout the United States. The disheartening letter was sent to an anonymous R33 GT-R owner, ordering him to either surrender ownership of, or export, his Skyline within 60 days or the government would take possession of the vehicle.
"Why would a letter of this magnitude be sent by the Department of Justice and not the Department of Motor Vehicles?" I asked myself. But before calling B.S. on the matter, further investigation revealed the shop/owner accused in the letter had found a loophole in our justice system: shipping the car into the U.S. in several pieces, reassembling the car, then registering it as a "kit car". Dozens of GT-Rs were brought into the states under this process and were successfully registered with the Department of Motor Vehicles to be driven on the streets, but a major problem still existed-the cars had not passed EPA and DOT regulations, which are required for any production vehicle to be operated on public roads.
At the time this column was written, the letter was only 11 days old, and not much was known about its ramifications; we can only hope for the best. While we patiently await any word on the matter, a blogger best summed things up when he wrote:
The War on Skylines = The War on Drugs. They can take away every Skyline in the US and it still won't do shit. Someone, somewhere, will figure out a way to bring one in. It's a car . . . not a crate full of bombs or fully automatic machine guns. Seriously, what difference do they think this will make?
Senior Editor
Scott Tsuneishi
Scott@Importtuner.Com