| About half of the action movies made in the 1980s and 1990s, it seems, end up with a final showdown in a shipyard, hero and villains weaving through crates and pallets and containers. (The other half in abandoned warehouses and steel mills with free-flowing magnesium sparks.) "Diplomatic immunity!" a South African criminal taunts from atop a cargo ship in Lethal Weapon 2, moments before Danny Glover drops him. Real encounters at America's shipping ports are overwhelmingly more banal, with customs officers generally not expecting to find containers stuffed with Krugerrands and cash—although one assumes it does happen from time to time—but for much of 2012 and 2013, they have seen a great deal of action among contraband vehicles. It's not dictator-gold Benzes that U.S. Customs is hunting for, like the S-class in that Lethal Weapon 2 scene, nor tax-dodging Ferraris, or even 900-hp Nissan Skylines. No, the vehicle that's the subject of the most scrutiny is that great British contribution to driving in mud, the Land Rover Defender. Customs and Border Protection, working with NHTSA, has seized more than 20 at ports in the past 18 months. In March, Homeland Security and CBP carted off almost 20 Defenders from a chiropractor's house in suburban North Carolina. What's going on?
A few years ago, Customs and Border Protection sat down with several federal agencies—whose regulations it enforces at the borders and ports—to discuss deeper collaboration. They set up an office called Import Safety Commercial Targeting and Analysis Center, a very federal name for a joint project that let officials from CBP and these other agencies work in the same building and figure out how to best enforce import rules. Customs executives asked NHTSA what its pain points were with unauthorized vehicles coming into the country. The answer? Defenders. Between NHTSA's regulations and emissions rules from the EPA, it's very difficult to import a vehicle from overseas to the U.S., even for personal use. Anything manufactured in the past 25 years needs to be fully compliant with American regulations—including crash and engine testing—so unless you're bringing a U.S.-spec car from overseas, it's just about impossible. For vehicles 25 years old or older, all the rules are waived. From our view, the NHTSA and EPA regulations are onerous and self-defeating. We understand the importance of keeping unsafe cars from flooding American roads, but the 25-year exemption ensures that the only vehicles eligible for import are the least safe and dirtiest. This fits into a larger international trade issue, in which American new-car and safety and emissions standards don't align with European ones, even though either set results in clean, safe cars. There's been a token effort to harmonize these regulations for several decades, and automakers think they could save a fortune if they didn't have to build cars to meet two sets of standards, but little progress has been made. For now, we're stuck with the 25-year rule, and that's the law.  An eBay seller describes this 1987 Defender as a special edition G4 Challenge truck. The G4 Challenge didn't begin until 2003. People still try to bring in newer stuff, of course, for every imaginable reason. Some are moving from outside the country and just want to keep their current car. Others want a bite of forbidden fruit—be it a late-model Alfa Romeo or an Audi RS6 wagon. More still see dollar signs, hoping to buy in-demand cars abroad and sell them. After the oldest Defenders turned 25 a few years ago, newer examples became ideal candidates for sneaking into the U.S. They're not immediately identifiable as contraband, as there are already some in the U.S., sold here legally by Land Rover until 1997, when the truck's exemption from airbag requirements and other regulations expired. That small population of Defenders also cultivated an enthusiast community, and they've pushed resale prices to shockingly high levels for what is essentially a glorified tractor. Clean, low-mileage examples of the rarer 110 model sell for close to $100,000, and even trucks with more than 100,000 miles on the odometer stretch to $50,000. Considering how cheap they are abroad, there's the potential for enormous profit in black-market imports. Land Rover's continued production of Defenders—they're still made new—makes newer and older ones difficult to distinguish, and many Americans like the upgraded interiors and diesel engines of the latest models. As a result, selling age-faked Defenders has become something of a cottage industry. Several companies in the U.K. advertise Defenders on the American eBay site, while some Americans also have started businesses importing the trucks and selling them here. How to Fake It Checking the VIN, or vehicle identification number, is the first—and traditionally only—stop for verifying a vehicle's age. In the Defender, VINs appear in two spots: There's one on the chassis, and another VIN plate on the casing of the brake booster. In most cases, the original VINs are ground off the newer Defender and a VIN from a 25-year-old European Defender—one on the road still, or one rusting away in a field somewhere—is etched in. With NHTSA's guidance, customs officials have caught many of these. This is a black-and-white case of breaking the rules, but there are murkier situations. A number of British companies now retrofit new body panels, components, and interiors to old Defender frames. We spoke with one such company, which doesn't deserve special mention here when other firms are doing the same thing, that says its practice is approved by NHTSA, and that its refurbished trucks have no trouble clearing customs. Even stranger still, the same U.K.-based seller says it will even entirely replace 25-year-old frames when they're too rusted or damaged. It etches the old VIN into the new frame, and either carries over the VIN-bearing brake booster or puts a new brake booster in the old casing. This, too, they claim, is legit. Consider it a modern-day Ship of Theseus. Crackdown To our surprise, officials from NHTSA and CBP were forthcoming in discussing the techniques they're using to catch contraband Defenders. VIN plates, for example, often look too new—and more incredibly, they've picked up that it's the rivets affixing the plates that look out of date. Freshly galvanized frames can be a tell, and nuts and bolts elsewhere on vehicles, like those on the doors in the photo above, are another tip-off that at least some refurbishment took place. CBP officers tend to take a pretty holistic view on vehicle inspection, meaning that they're not satisfied merely by a 25-year-old VIN. If vehicle components overall look too new, they'll reach out not only to NHTSA but even to Land Rover itself—which, officials say, has been helpful to a nearly unprecedented degree. Land Rover can, of course, date frames based on the minor details that changed from year to year. This isn't a quick process, nor is it cheap for vehicle owners. Verification can take weeks, during which time someone's Defender is held in a customs area—and they may need to pay storage fees for the duration. One CBP official emphasized that many people buying vehicles from overseas don't consider these costs, which can accrue even if a car is eventually cleared for import. The situation gets much worse when a car is found ineligible: cars can be seized and crushed, seized and sold by the government to international buyers, and shippers fined or potentially criminally prosecuted.
Meanwhile, nobody at either NHTSA or CBP could comment on the status of Aaron Richardet, the chiropractor. Several people in the Defender community have told us that "Doc Aaron" was running a business importing later-model Defenders; if that's true, he's likely facing trouble. What was once a steady stream of Defenders arriving at U.S. ports has slowed dramatically since the crackdown became more intense. The British restoration and retrofitting company says it hasn't bothered trying to ship any Defenders in months—even though, supposedly, it's never had any of its trucks confiscated. "These are just restorations. If we have to ship rusty Defenders to Florida and do the restoration there to satisfy U.S. customs," the manager tells us, "then we will." The first and last photographs are from a recent Customs and Border Protection investigation. They were furnished to us by CBP.  from Car and Driver Blog http://blog.caranddriver.com | |||
| | |||
| | |||
|
No comments:
Post a Comment