this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2024
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My bad. It just seems like the low hanging fruit everyone plays off of.
We actually used to get vehicles close to this size. The Suzuki samurai (really a jimny) was sold here for a number of years. Geo sold a fair number of almost kei cars that Suzuki made.
I’m a fan of limiting them from interstate highways, but keeping them registrable. It’s just dumb they cite “safety” even though the law explicitly calls out they aren’t required to be safe. I just want a nice 25-45 mph city truck to lug dirty junk around.
But if anyone is curious, Douglas deBoard imported so many European cars in the 80’s that cut into the profits of Mercedes USA enough that they pushed the law through. Buying them in Europe and importing them was actually cheaper (in some aspects) than buying a US market one. And the imported cars were better equipped!
It wasn’t even about protecting American manufacturers or trucks. Mercedes has just always been a huge dick.
No lie. Gray market Mercedes were awesome. Way more powerful and you could get base models with zero cruft - manual transmissions and wind up windows.