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Originally Posted by NINE
Correct it was Mercedes that made Grey market cars illegal.
This avenue was increasingly successful, especially in cases where only lower-specification models were officially offered on the US market. For example, Mercedes-Benz chose to offer only the lower-output 380SEL model to Americans in 1981, ensuring a huge demand for the much faster 500SEL available in the rest of the world. BMW had the same issue with their 745i Turbo. The grey market was successful enough that it ate significantly into the business of Mercedes-Benz of North America and their dealers. The corporation launched a successful million-dollar congressional lobbying effort to stop private importation of vehicles not officially intended for the U.S. market. An organisation called AICA (Automotive Importers Compliance Association) was formed by importers in California, Florida, New York, Texas, and elsewhere to counter some of these actions by Mercedes lobbyists, but the Motor Vehicle Safety Compliance Act was passed in 1988, effectively ending private import of grey-market vehicles to the United States. No evidence was presented that grey-import vehicles' safety performance differed significantly from that of US models, and there have been allegations of improper lobbying, but the issue has never been raised in court.
Grey import vehicle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
Yup, I helped import an original European version E30 M3 for my friend back in the 80's. Grey Market cars was decent business in the San Francisco bay area.
The issue really is not on lawmakers radar. This is why Homeland security has gotten all misguided in the issue. They seem to think that these cars represent a threat to the security of the country, because they are illegal and lawmakers could care less about the whole thing.