Has any Canadian been successful in importing a new IS into Canada? The price differential between a fully loaded IS350 here and the US is huge and if it's possible to import an IS it would be well worth it for me considering the price difference. I'd love to hear any stories or experiences people have had with this .

 

You would still need to pay the duty/taxes upon importing the car in Canada and make sure the car has been upgraded to meet Canadian road standards. I'm considering applying for Permanente Residency for BC from the US, but I haven’t decided if I’m going to buy the IS in the US or wait till I get into Canada to by an IS. I'm not sure if you could walk into a US dealership and just buy an IS with a Canadian home address. I could be wrong. There have been other threads about this topic. If you do a search you might be able to find more information.

 

$100 licensing fee (paper work fee) to get the car back.
17% Duty Fees
14% Tax

And the cost of transporting the car over and meeting the safety standard, in which I believe you are ok.

I'm not sure how the warranty works, but it looks like a steal.

 

Lots of threas on my.is. But the bottom line, the costs and administrative hoops make it undesirable.

 

First you need to check out the RIV site to make sure the vehicle is eligible for import. The IS should be. There is good information on that site about importing. I believe Toyota/Lexus will honour the warranty but you need to find that out. If that is good then:
You need to find a dealer in the US to sell you the car (14% exchange rate). Then you need permits to drive it to the border. You need to get a letter (something to do with recalls on that vehicle) from Lexus/Toyota US to show at the border. You need to fax some form of export and have it sent to the US customs office you are going to stop at on your way back to Canada. That form needs to be faxed 3 days in advance of you showing up to the border. If you find a dealer with experince selling to Canadians then they could probably arrange permits, etc. Once you get to the Canadian side of the border, there is a 6.1% import tax and 6% gst due, along with the RIV fee of like $200, before they let you leave. Then technically you probably should have some permit from the MTO to drive it home but............... You also need insurance for the drive in the US and drive home in Canada, etc. but your insurance should more than be willing to provide you this, for a fee of course

Then you wait to receive a letter requiring you to take the car in for an inspection. It comes pretty quick. The inpsection is done at Canadian Tire. You need DRL (IS has them already), A child tether seat anchor or something (not sure if it is already there), French lables for the sun visor SRS warning sticker and, I beleive stickers on the instrument panel showing you the metric equivalant of the speedometer. Once you get that you go to the MTO, register the car and pay the PST, take care of the insurance and you're good to go.

Yes, you can save quite a bit. Yes, you need to do some work, and spend some money. One problem you may run into later is resale value. Let say you save $8000 importing. How much of hit, if any, do you take when selling. That is the question.

 

Thanks for the input everyone. I did some research myself and I found on another forum that Lexus dealers in the US have an agreement not to sell new Lexus' to Canadians for export They're only allowed to sell used Lexus' to Canadians for export. But apparently there is something that some dealers can do to circumvent this. Not sure how that works. I'm going to try calling some NY dealers and see how that goes.

 

Can you post your findings once you call around different dealers in NY. I would be very interested in knowing the procedure. Not only for a cost savings but I like the fact that you can configure the car pretty much any way you want in the US, as appose to Canada, where you have basicly 4 packages to choose from.

 

Just keep US tags on it.

 

(1) you can't register unless you're a resident, (2) you can't get plates unless to register, (3) see 1.

 

Your right in terms of being able to configure the car a little bit more to your liking. But because of the Import Tax (which I'm sure is still 17%, since the car is made in Japan, but of course that is based on importing an NSX) Exchange Rate, then your GST & PST. It almost defeats the purpose.

 

Not sure where R1lee is getting 17% import tax. AFAIK, the tax/duty to import a car not manufactured in North America is 6.1%.

Before I purchased the IS i was considering a BMW. Found out about the cool European Delievery option and did some investigating on the whole import a car to Canada thing. ED in Canada actually makes the deal worse than buying up here and they won't allow Canadians to take advantage of ED deal the US gets. For the Americans it's a cool thing and, depending on how you tailor the trip, you can save a small to medium amount. When it's all said and done you do end up getting a nice trip out of the deal. With no European trip I decided I to purchase up here.

 

While I am not sure if you will save huge amounts on the price, I belive you will at least get the exact car you want. The bigger concern is how long it would take to go through the process.

 

Let's say Toyota/Lexus will honour the warranty and you can find a dealer that will sell you the car. I'd say a 7-10 days after purchase you'd be good to get it over the border. Than about 10 days wait until you receive the letter of inspection. Another day or so to get that done and off to the MTO and you're in business.

 

Your looking at 17-20 days or so after purchase to go through the whole process. It could be worth it depending on what you want. The reality is that in Canada if you want say and IS 250AWD with ML Nav then you have to import from the US.

Right now it looks as if the ML is only available on the 350 primium nav package. Lexus needs to fix this.

 

After thinking about it I figured it was too much hassle to go through the whole import thing so I went to the dealership today and got myself an '07 Smoky Granite Mica IS350 I pick it up on Friday. I can't wait!