Wednesday, December 2, 2009
1999 Lotus Elise Sport 190 - Street Registered in IL
Here's another 1st generation Elise for sale on eBay, and this one is intact with it's original engine. It's located and registered in Chicago, Illinois.
This car is the Sport 190 variant, which has a 190hp Rover 4-cyllinder engine (base model has 118hp) and sport-tuned suspension, wheels, and seats. The ad says this car was further tuned in the US to produce 205 horsepower, and it hasn't been raced.
These cars aren't US-eligible except for off-road use, so I'm uncertain how this seller has managed to import and register the car in Illinois. The Elise I wrote about a few weeks ago had a Honda engine transplant to comply with EPA requirements and was registered as a kit car. The seller wisely advises bidders that it may not be registerable in all states, and that it hasn't been emissions tested in IL.
This is another example of a car that doesn't fit into line with federal regulations, so it's tough to really explain how it is legally registered without talking to the owner and their local department of motor vehicles as well as your own. The ad is located here on eBay.
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Whats even more strange is that the Autocheck report mentions it was initially a Florida car for a number of months.
ReplyDeleteHow this car arrived here is a bit of a mystery! I talked to a guy selling a 1996 Rover 216 Coupe in Florida, obviously not a car you can just ship over. He told me he was stationed in Germany with the military and that when he was brought back to the US, they shipped all his possessions including his 216 Coupe. Since it was shipped through the military, it didn't hit customs in the US and he was able to convince the DMV it was older than it actually was, new title and he was on the road!
Not sure how much of that was true. However, living in a remote part of Scotland, near a US military base I would see several US vehicles on our roads, everything was shipped/flown over, including the materials to build the houses, gas, food, etc.
My point, I am rambling on here, that it could be possible some of these cars are coming over from the military, if they ship everything over to other countries, it would make some sense that its no big deal shipping big items like this back.
I've heard of that before, and it makes sense how it gets through customs that way, but like you said I can't imagine it being easy to get a title, including for subsequent owners who have no EPA or DOT releases. I wrote to the seller of this Lotus to see if he'd share his story.
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