i, as with everyone else, is interested in knowing as well; but mostly has to do with him being in the military and sent overseas and brought the car upon return to the USA. many gray market europeans cars came back this way (which i guess technically is illegal too). photos of his car clearly shows NYS license plates, registration sticker, and inspection sticker.
he briefly outlined it in his post on GT4OC: did you not read it? i was hoping he'd come here and register and post about it, but i don't think he has...
for the lazy people, here it is (not sure if appropriate to cut/paste from another board to here, if so, mods, leave the URL and take out the post)
http://www.gt4oc.net/forums/viewtopic.p ... 2#p1095359
by Swift Elemental on 08 Mar 2010 23:43
Hello all, I'm from Long Island, NY. I've been owning my GT-4 for 2 years now. It was imported from Italy. I bought the car when I was stationed in Italy with the US army for 4 years. I bought the car in my last year there before returning home. I have to say it was kind of difficult getting her here to the states. Getting registration for this car was quite time consuming and some money was needed. Guess since I was in the army it was a little easier to import her here. Although I had to buy a USDM rear license plate bezel so I could properly mount a New York plate in the back. Also had to swap in a USDM steering wheel with SRS, since the original 3 spoke steering wheel was a non-SRS. She's a 94 Gt-4 with now 174k miles. She's pretty much stock except for the rims and some mild mods under the bonnet. Since the GT-4 is pretty much illegal here in the states I get a lot of questions about it and how I got it here. I'm rather happy it's LHD though since here and Italy drive LHD. Anyways enough about me here is some pictures recently of my baby. Enjoy.
by Swift Elemental on 09 Mar 2010 17:13
Hey guys, Thanks for all the faff love! Yeah importing her here to New York was fairly difficult. Before returning home a little over a year ago. I left the car behind at a storage facility which also exports cars. I didn't see my car for months only took some pictures of it before I left home. I had used my wife's USDM Celica ST (AT200) while I waited for my ST205 to come home.
First I had to have the Italian issued title sent via air mail here to my home. It took over 1 month to wait for that. After finally getting it in the mail I had to go to the DMV and get special paper work for the car. I actually had a new temp NY title made a few months before I even got the car here. The title was for a kit car. After having the new NYS kit car title issued I had it faxed over to the exportation depot and customs there. Then after everything was finally finalized the car began it's long voyage from it's home land to the USA. It took 2 months to get to to customs here in the states. Then an additional 1 1/2 to have the car checked and inspected and emissions check too. Once finally cleared I had the car shipped from Georgia up to NY which took 8 days. Once she arrived at my house she sat in my garage safe for another 1 months until I was able to get her inspected here in NY and after she passed she was finally issued a official passenger car title. After that she was on the road and it was amazing driving her around here at home. I was use to driving here around back in Italy for over a year. It felt great having her home. It's like adopting a child from another country. I was so happy. Yes a lot of people ask me all the time about how I got a GT-4 here. It cost me altogether $5,000 to get her here and registered and inspected cleared for public road use. It's great because its LHD not RHD. She's fast love the AWD power here. Sadly though the only thing I worry about is when if something needs to be serviced it might be hard to replace some of the parts on this 3s-gte engine seeing that this engine was not released after 1994 for the 6th gen Celicas.
Cheers from NY!!!