Jump to content

Question regarding Japanese vehicles in EU


Pozri

Recommended Posts

I’m looking to move to Spain and I notice cars are left hand drive, I’m wondering how hard it would to be to find left hand drive say R32’s or popular Japanese cars used for drift that would normally ship right hand drive such as the S15 and what laws there are regarding converting to left hand drive if need be if really wanted one 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Im in Europe but not from Spain. It's going to be nearly impossible to find a Skyline or S15 LHD. They were never built as LHD. So for a Skyline or S15 you would have to do the conversion yourself, I bet there's enough on that to find online. I drove an imported S2000 it was an RHD car. The only thing atleast over here in The Netherlands is that you would have to adjust the headlights on an RHD car since the lightbeam is pointing in the wrong direction, blinding oncoming traffic. As for converting it to LHD, I'm not sure as to having to have it re-register as a LHD, maybe if you'd go from a automatic transmission to a manual, or change the engine size.

 

Not sure what the rules are for Spain though, I consider them to be less strict but I really don't know

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

44 minutes ago, neospoon said:

Im in Europe but not from Spain. It's going to be nearly impossible to find a Skyline or S15 LHD. They were never built as LHD. So for a Skyline or S15 you would have to do the conversion yourself, I bet there's enough on that to find online. I drove an imported S2000 it was an RHD car. The only thing atleast over here in The Netherlands is that you would have to adjust the headlights on an RHD car since the lightbeam is pointing in the wrong direction, blinding oncoming traffic. As for converting it to LHD, I'm not sure as to having to have it re-register as a LHD, maybe if you'd go from a automatic transmission to a manual, or change the engine size.

 

Not sure what the rules are for Spain though, I consider them to be less strict but I really don't know

converting to left hand drive may be a challenge depending how hard it is to get hands on parts ether from US or somewhere in the EU but while I was looking I noticed a few videos on people doing it though looked like dodgy wiring jobs which I would never do as I have set myself a unrealistic standard working in refinishing. Parts that are available really depends on popularity of a car I guess, wiring and interior parts might be biggest issue I'd face not to mention any compliance standards. Not sure about there but here I know it cost a fortune to import a car and make it road legal, adding conversion to that and gonna put a dent in account for sure. But at this point in time I'm just looking into it to see what options there are and if I do go for a project how to go about it.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Pozri said:

converting to left hand drive may be a challenge depending how hard it is to get hands on parts ether from US or somewhere in the EU but while I was looking I noticed a few videos on people doing it though looked like dodgy wiring jobs which I would never do as I have set myself a unrealistic standard working in refinishing. Parts that are available really depends on popularity of a car I guess, wiring and interior parts might be biggest issue I'd face not to mention any compliance standards. Not sure about there but here I know it cost a fortune to import a car and make it road legal, adding conversion to that and gonna put a dent in account for sure. But at this point in time I'm just looking into it to see what options there are and if I do go for a project how to go about it.

 

Again I can only talk for what I know applies to the Netherlands (I'm no expert). But R32+ and S15's are expensive cars to have over here. First of all the import, deciding wether you are doing everything yourself or have a company find a car for you and ship it to wherever you'd want it. The S2000 I got, I imported myself although it was a UK registered car. The only extra costs where the actual Import costs and the registration.

 

One thing that pops in my mind is that the S2000 was originally sold in the EU so it met all the EU standards as far as safety/emissions etc goes. Now most of the nice JDM cars, were actually never sold over here, so you'd have to make the car meet all the standards the EU has set. Ofcourse there are already enough of those cars driving around over here so how to get this done should be well known on car forums and such. And this is also something to take in mind, you might be able to find a car you'd like already registered in the Europe, which would make it significantly easier. But the price of those cars is usually pretty high. 

 

As for parts, again there's enough companies offer parts and can ship overnight from Japan xD but that comes with extra costs. Especially for the more rare and exclusive cars (Supra, NSX, Skylines etc) Since you said your standards are high, I'm expecting you'd only want OEM parts.

 

If your goal is drifting in the EU just buy a cheap old BMW, parts widely available on every junkyard :P

 

 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, neospoon said:

 

Again I can only talk for what I know applies to the Netherlands (I'm no expert). But R32+ and S15's are expensive cars to have over here. First of all the import, deciding wether you are doing everything yourself or have a company find a car for you and ship it to wherever you'd want it. The S2000 I got, I imported myself although it was a UK registered car. The only extra costs where the actual Import costs and the registration.

 

One thing that pops in my mind is that the S2000 was originally sold in the EU so it met all the EU standards as far as safety/emissions etc goes. Now most of the nice JDM cars, were actually never sold over here, so you'd have to make the car meet all the standards the EU has set. Ofcourse there are already enough of those cars driving around over here so how to get this done should be well known on car forums and such. And this is also something to take in mind, you might be able to find a car you'd like already registered in the Europe, which would make it significantly easier. But the price of those cars is usually pretty high. 

 

As for parts, again there's enough companies offer parts and can ship overnight from Japan xD but that comes with extra costs. Especially for the more rare and exclusive cars (Supra, NSX, Skylines etc) Since you said your standards are high, I'm expecting you'd only want OEM parts.

 

If your goal is drifting in the EU just buy a cheap old BMW, parts widely available on every junkyard :P

 

 

alright thanks, think that is enough information for me to work off in working out where to start. Will probably ask my boss as he might know a little about compliance and conversions though given he is all about German cars being from there he probably just tell me to get a cheap car that runs good and work on that.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...