The gov't is crushing this guys cars...

[A Horse With No Name]

Note that he is restoring a 64 Grand Prix also...

http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/article/20120527/GPG0101/205270497

[A Horse With No Name]

My only question is what happens when a car becomes a tube frame race car and the vin is gone... obviously at that point, it's never going to get registered for street use ever again, so the point is probably moot but....it would still be illegal to own that car.

From the article....

"Tuesday will be a sad day for Beno when he goes to the impound area to collect his personal effects from the two cars. It's especially frustrating, he said, because the cars are just a few years from qualifying for a federal exemption to safety standards granted to imports that are more than 25 years old."

[daves87rs]

Unless he plans to drive these cars like they do in the movie, I fail to see the point of crushing them..

[A Horse With No Name]

So do I...alas I think our gov't is wildly out of control in a lot of ways.

Petty bureaucratic idiots with nothing better to do...

[daves87rs]

So do I...alas I think our gov't is wildly out of control in a lot of ways.

Petty bureaucratic idiots with nothing better to do...

Yep....just don't come to MI. It just gets worse here...

[Intrepidation]

I have a soft spot for those Skylines.

[riviera74]

Too bad NIssan did not bother federalizing Skylines until Infiniti brought them over for legal sale a few years ago. Shame about those Skylines.

[G. David Felt]

This is all kinds of wrong by the gov. I thought washington was bad as a guy who bought his silver Skyline from Motoplex in California who imported and emission complied the car says his is not street legal here, so now he just drives it at the track, but misses driving it daily. The car is a freakin beast and the GOV is taking our rights away to so called protect us.

The GOV is for the people by the people and this BS in telling us what you can and cannot do and what you should and should not drive is BS.

This GOV will have revolution on it's hands at the rate they keep going with taking away freedoms and peoples property.

The prosecutor is just a lacky who was jealous of someone else that had a better car that could beat his pathetic German car. I have yet to see any lawyer drive an american Auto.

[cletus8269]

so, the gov will go after this guys cars? have they looked at the "rat rod" scene lately? it scares the piss out of me to look at teh horrible workmanship on these "expressions" quite frankly electric chairs seem safer than some of the cobbled up messes that show up at some car shows.

[Camino LS6]

This is what happens when self-appointed assholes that don't understand the subject create and enforce regulations.

It's unreasonable and extreme.

[SAmadei]

Makes me wonder how far the rabbit hole goes here.

The article seems to be hung up on the idea that he removed the VIN tags and shipped the car that way, and this is what break the law. Now I know that you can build a car from other cars and get a VIN of your own... in NJ, you demonstrate that you have a bill of sale for all major pieces, a police officer does a basic safety inspection and you get a NJ title if it passes muster. This sounds like what he did. I assume the original VIN tags were never put on the car again... because that, IMHO, would be outright illegal.

But lets say he got a Skyline body... and its cut in half and all the metal that touched the original VIN was torched out. He produces a bill of sale for two halves of a car and some sheetmetal to repair the holes and welds together a Skyline body. After adding all the rest of the parts, he gets a title. Is this illegal now? It was still cobbled together from parts. What if large sections of the car were rebuilt... in fact, the entire body is formed by hand and looks just like a Skyline... but with not Skyline parts (except the bolt on ones added later). Is this now a crime? This is happening with aftermarket '69 Camaros, perfectly legal. Seems like the US government just has a vendetta against the Skyline... or anything that even appears to be a Skyline.

Seems to me the laws involved are too vague and should be thrown out for that reason.

[Robert Hall]

Sounds like he didn't follow the right procedures to get it in the country and register it legally. There are many Skylines in the US that have been imported (often by importers like Moto Rex) so there is obviously a right way to do it..

[A Horse With No Name]

This is all kinds of wrong by the gov. I thought washington was bad as a guy who bought his silver Skyline from Motoplex in California who imported and emission complied the car says his is not street legal here, so now he just drives it at the track, but misses driving it daily. The car is a freakin beast and the GOV is taking our rights away to so called protect us.

The GOV is for the people by the people and this BS in telling us what you can and cannot do and what you should and should not drive is BS.

This GOV will have revolution on it's hands at the rate they keep going with taking away freedoms and peoples property.

The prosecutor is just a lacky who was jealous of someone else that had a better car that could beat his pathetic German car. I have yet to see any lawyer drive an american Auto.

My lawyer drives nothing but cadillacs, and keeps them immaculately detailed.

Why do you think I use him?

[G. David Felt]

This is all kinds of wrong by the gov. I thought washington was bad as a guy who bought his silver Skyline from Motoplex in California who imported and emission complied the car says his is not street legal here, so now he just drives it at the track, but misses driving it daily. The car is a freakin beast and the GOV is taking our rights away to so called protect us.

The GOV is for the people by the people and this BS in telling us what you can and cannot do and what you should and should not drive is BS.

This GOV will have revolution on it's hands at the rate they keep going with taking away freedoms and peoples property.

The prosecutor is just a lacky who was jealous of someone else that had a better car that could beat his pathetic German car. I have yet to see any lawyer drive an american Auto.

My lawyer drives nothing but cadillacs, and keeps them immaculately detailed.

Why do you think I use him?

Very cool, this is the first lawyer I have heard of that drives American. About damn time.

THanks for sharing.

Back to the thread, what about kit cars? I have never seen a vin on these cars and how the Skylines were built tends to remind me of a kit car.

I do have to agree that removing a vin while illegal should not end in the destruction of two beautiful auto's. The prosecutor just seems like a dick.

[A Horse With No Name]

Kit cars have an MSO, manufacturers statement of Origin. Our local SCCA guys and local Miata Club set up events for the Ohio Cobra Club...getting one registered and titled is stupid simple, I am thinking hard about a Factory Five Cobra Myself.

Here is how it works...take the receipts of what you bought to build the car with the manufacturers MSO # mftrs. plate to the Ohio Highway patrol...they check your build to make sure you didn't do anything stupid....and then they give you a vin # and a Vin plate that's good in all 50 states if you move.

In Ohio, kit cars don't even have to pass smog...one of the guys I race with has a 550 HP Roush Racing 351 Windsor in his car, not cats...a big old Holly Carb on top of the 351....and it's legal to run anywhere, pretty much. Not sure about Cali, though.

[A Horse With No Name]

Oh, and this is almost a dead clone of one of our local SCCA cars that is also a daily driver....

Enjoy!

http://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play?&c=8&p=factory+five&vid=c48b72b2efa9455c2bf32be56d6fc5df&dt=1312416000&l=13&turl=http%3A%2F%

[A Horse With No Name]

Although the local SCCA car has more than 250 at the wheels...I've ridden in it at events...it is a beast....