Re: Importing cars to the US???

[rochow@pixelmagic.com]

>It is a real pain, thousands of dollars are needed. First you have to change
>everything to US spec (bumper height/size, steel bars in the doors, emissions,
>lights, wiring (yes, wirring) etc...) You litteraly have to take the car and
>take the DOT book and get to modifying. It would be much cheaper to go through
a
>firm because they can also get all of it tested for you (lights, emissions,
>etc...)

Has anyone here made any experience (or just enquiries) about the 
once-per-life low-restriction import one is allowed as a foreigner?

I want to (some day) import me a Renault 4, which does have the 
advantage of having been built with only minor mods from '61-'90,
so that there's also the possibility of combining old-model numbers
and recent-model parts, as was done by Citroen 2CV importers in the 80s.

So my other question: has anyone made any experiences with importing
pre-emissions-regulation and/or pre-bumper,etc.-regulation cars into
the US? From some time in the 80s, these cars were built for unleaded
gas (no cat though); bumper (and general body) strength is laughable,
the only safe part is that the car is light enough for the greenhouse (as it
were, with all flat glass) to survive rollovers surprisingly undamaged.

Any ideas? While just driving a car here that looks like that would be 
interesting, the suspension provides an experience not duplicated by any
other car...

(What about Canada, BTW? I know they were imported there for a while,
but how common are they there now?)

-gbr