Mack
Well-Known Member
duh09 said:
I have to be honest and say that I didn't do it myself, but had a company do it for me which specialises in importing American cars.
Mustangs are not officially sold in Europe, but there are a lot of Mustangs around. However, they have no official "type-registration", meaning the type of car is approved. For example, if you would import a PT Cruiser, which is approved, the government will assume your PT is the same as every other PT, and approve it like that. But the Mustang doesn't have that, so every single Mustang needs to be approved individually.
Upon entering of the car, you need to pay A LOT of taxes and environmental taxes. You have to get your car to an official government checkpoint, where they will check EVERYTHING. If they find something that they don't like, they do not approve and you can go and come back later. It will cost you a lot of money, of course. I'm pretty sure Dutch can tell you a whole lot more about this.
Most of the US front and taillights will not be approved, so these need to be altered. If you have bad luck, you will need new wiring too. The US-thing where you have orange day-lights in your blinkers is not allowed so this needs to go. You will need an extra set of blinkers in the front fenders. You will need a fog light in the rear if your car is from 1999 or never. Officially red turning signals at the rear are not allowed. The car cannot make too much noise: most American cars need to have an amendment in the exhaust, a stock 2005 V6 Mustang is too loud according to the rules.
And I can go on and on.
My car, a supercharged 98 Mustang, would never have been approved. With a supercharger you can turn around immediately because they will not approve that. Same with my (very loud) magnaflows. Same with my 18-inch rims and very wide tires. Same with my sequential taillights. This will not be approved.
But there are ways around it, fortunately. When my car arrived in Holland, it was initially check not by the Dutch officials, but with officials from Germany. They are less strict about cars. They will approve it and give it a German license plate number. Then you take your car and German license plate to the Dutch officials and say: the car is approved in Germany, which is European Union as well, so you have to approve it too.
My car was fitted with small wheels and tires for the Dutch check. The exhaust was stuffed to reduce noise. There were temporary blinkers taped on the fenders. This and the German license were just enough to have it approved by Dutch officials. In the end it took a couple of weeks and the entire proces was more expensive than what I initially paid for the car.
If your car is not approved, you will not get a license plate and there is no chance you can drive it without being pulled over. When your car is not approved, you can just pay a couple of hundreds of Dollars for the check, make an appointment for next time and make more amendments to your car.
So in America it's not that different from here. It's stupid to say "this is the American government for you" because it's not typically American.
By the way: if you drive a Skyline in the US that is not approved by the government, and you get into an accident, I'm pretty sure your insurance will not pay anything. So that's just stupid.
Sorry for the long story
