If the car was federal DOT legal and will still pass emissions for the year of manufacture, you are allowed to modify your car as you see fit (it does still have to pass local inspection codes though). Bringing in a vehicle that was never built to be US DOT certified is illegal unless it is over 25 years old.

What Red Mountain has apparently done (with at least one of their Defenders) is to have a new VIN issued by the State of NY as either a replacement for a missing VIN (which, if they removed the original VIN, means up to 5 years in prison, 10 if they did it and sell it) or as a VIN for a kit car (which is lying to the state, opens them up for more time behind bars). Just because a state issued a title does NOT mean the vehicle is street legal - a title is for proving ownership only, not for determining the fitness of a vehicle for service. I did not see a sticker showing that the Defender (I only looked at the '98) had been Federalized by a Registered Importer (nearly impossible to do, as it falls outside the acceptable year range for Defenders), and usually that sticker would have been on the door pillar close to the VIN tag. Therefore, it CANNOT be legally registered and driven on the road in the US.

AFAIK, ECR is modifying NAS Defenders that were brought in and sold by Land Rover. It's perfectly legal to modify your DOT certified truck however you see fit, as long as the parts you put on it (mainly windows, seat belts, motor, tires and the like) meet DOT specs. OR ECR is a federally recognized Registered Importer and are allowed to modify '94-'97 non-NAS Defenders to bring them up to US DOT specs. I'm not sure, I've never asked them.

The laws are pretty strict. If anyone could buy a new car abroad, take it apart there, ship it over here in pieces and reassemble it THEN legally drive it on the road here, we'd have been flooded with cheap Chinese Cherries and the like YEARS ago. What's to stop a foreign manufacturer from shipping junky cr@p here in CKD and pawning it off on the public, if not our DOT and import laws? We're all MUCH safer as a result, believe me. I know I don't want plate glass windows in MY car, for instance.

If I were out driving and got hit by someone in one of these non-DOT legal trucks, I'd sue them 'til they bled out their eyes. Then I'd sue their insurance company for insuring it, whomever sold it to them, whomever inspected it, and so on back to the source. And I'd win. The law would be on my side. If you're in doubt, ring up your insurance agent and ask what would happen in that event.

ATV's are titled these days, too, and you can't drive one of THEM on the road either.

Mech


***Sorry for the diatribe, but this is a touchy subject for me. I hate seeing dishonest con artists selling unsafe cars to unsuspecting people, especially when there are plenty of honest people out there doing it right. Burns me up...