Where Does The US 25-Year Import Rule Come From?

As the year draws to a close, petrolheads – sorry, gearheads – over in the US start to get excited about which forbidden fruit cars will turn 25 in the coming 12 months, and thus become eligible for import to the States.

2025 is set to be a quieter year for newly eligible cars, unlike 2024, which saw the R34 Nissan Skyline GT-R finally become legal for import, driving values further into the stratosphere. There are still a few notable newcomers from the year 2000 though, including the Vauxhall VX220/Opel Speedster, Volkswagen Lupo GTI, the 2JZ-powered oddity that was the Toyota Origin, and the coveted V-Spec II version of the R34.

Why exactly, though, does such a rule exist? After all, plenty of other countries have far more relaxed car import rules – here in the UK, for instance, you can import pretty much anything at any time.

Why does the US have a 25-year import rule?

It wasn’t always this way, and the reasons behind it boil down to car companies applying pressure to the government. In the 1980s, plenty of people in the market for a new car – especially one from a European manufacturer – figured out that they could buy a better-equipped car from Europe and import it for much less than it would cost to buy an equivalent car tailored for the US market. The bare minimum to make the car compliant with US safety and emissions rules could then be done privately.

Supposedly, come the mid-’80s, around a fifth of new Mercedes cars registered in the US were being imported from Europe rather than bought through Merc’s official US distributors, which said distributors were understandably pissed off about.

It was arguably Mercedes more than any other manufacturer that was instrumental in getting changes made to the law, its North American division backing a bill that arrived in Congress in 1985 proposing that the import of cars that didn’t meet US specifications be banned.

By 1988, that bill was law, and cars that didn’t specifically comply with US regulations could no longer be imported. There are a few exceptions to this, though, the biggest one being for cars over 25 years old. At that point, the US government considers them classics, and therefore no longer beholden to regulations, and all bets are off.

Are there any other ways around it?

Another way around this is to use a Registered Importer. These are workshops certified by their states as being able to carry out the necessary modifications to make a car US-compliant. For such a huge country, the list of Registered Importers is remarkably small, and the process can be hugely expensive. Even then, there’s a list of cars that are still outright banned from being imported, and even if you do get a car modified through these channels, it could still fall foul of a state inspection and all that money might have been spent for nothing.

The other workaround is the Show and Display rule. Passed in 1999, partially as a result of pressure from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who owned a non-compliant Porsche 959, it provides a list of cars that hold “historic or technological significance” that are exempt from the usual rule, and are allowed a very limited 2500 miles per year on public roads. These tend to be ultra-rare supercars and luxury cars, so as much as you might want to, you can’t use it to sneak in a 2004 Renault Clio 1.2.

The best bet, then, is to be patient and wait until the car you want to import turns 25, whatever effect that might end up having on the values of something particularly desirable like a Skyline.