More bits:

Utah apparently exempts non-residents from tax for vehicles. See fillable form at http://tax.utah.gov/forms/current/tc-583.pdf. (There's a dealer north of Provo, http://www.miniofmurray.com.)

The ucanimport blog has lots on dealing with BMW. Sounds tricksy.
http://ucanimport.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html

The Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) is offering seminars on importing cars. Not available in all locations. http://cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/events-evenements/menu-eng.html

 

Good info, but there is a flaw...

Once you get to the boarder the Customs agency will require you to provide valid automobile insurance to drive it as well as transfer papers to drive the car, unless you tow it.

Which means the car would have to sit in the US for 30 days to clear to get PST exempt. And that does make sense...but who i going to keep your car for 30 days in the US after you paid for it, with no insurance?

 

What do you mean by "transfer papers"? From what I understand, all I need to cross the border is the New Jersey car title, a signed sales invoice, the BMW Admissibility letter, insurance, and a North American compliant sticker. You then pay the RIV fee, A/C tax, and GST. I've read nothing so far that mentions any "transfer papers" beyond "form 1" from the RIV.

And as for insurance, I've been lead to believe that you only need a valid VIN #, and they'll insure you without any problems. Because I need to buy a 20 day NJ temporary license, there really is no point in getting the car registered in Ontario until the 30 days are up and I've already completed all of my inspections.

Am I missing something here?

 

IDK your making me second guess myself. I was under the impression that US transfer plates will not work once your cross the border.

I have no experience in this, the last two cars my friends and i imported from US were shipped to the boarder.

 

I have some more news about my import to share with everybody. When I originally called the BMW head office, I was told that they couldn't estimate the cost of mods, as they were not qualified to answer those types of questions. I was told to contact the BMW dealership directly for a quote, and that they would handle the mods and release the recall clearance to me.

So I walked into the dealership to talk with one of their associates. He told me that all I really needed to worry about was the daytime running lights and the metric readout behind the steering wheel. I was told that these fixes were only a matter of flashing the on-board computer, and it would only require 1-2 hours of work. I agreed, and paid them the $350 to start the process.

Well, a week later, the BMW head office sends the dealership a letter (via snail mail), saying that they HAVE to change the entire instrument cluster in order to approve the recall clearance. The mechanic at BMW made it clear to me that this wasn't necessary to pass the inspection, but his hands were tied as the head office is responsible for distributing the letter to the dealership. They denied my request to have a third-party mechanic or the RIV inspection centre give me a quote for the mods. So now I'm faced with a "surprise" demand for thousands of dollars worth of mods, AFTER I'd gone through the trouble of calling them ahead of time and AFTER I agreed to a sale with an American dealership.

So right now, I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I can either try and back out of the sale with the US dealership (and probably lose my deposit), or go ahead with the unnecessary mods as per BMW's order. Either way, I'm probably going to have to talk with a lawyer to see whether or not BMW Canada's actions are legal.

Any thoughts from you guys?

 

This seems like an unfair trade practice, since it is clearly more than RIV requires.

It might be worth a shot to write a very polite letter to the chairman of BMW Canada (the public library can help you with a name and address), pointing this out and also saying that this unfair and expensive requirement is likely to have lasting effects on the brand loyalty of yourself and hundreds of other Canadian customers ... long after American and Canadian prices equalize. Then tell him what you want -- the practice of requiring a fair charge for only flashing the computer.
MM

 

Thousands? How much exactly did they quote for changing the instrument cluster. It can't be more than 600-900$ for the part and 2-3 hours of labor.

Suggestions:
1-Have another dealer give you a quote
2-Ask the US dealer if he can obtain the part from Europe (or Canada) and do it for you, at the faire price (cost + profit margin..... not 3 x cost + margin!)
3-Open the instrument cluster, put P-Touch labels on the mph labels. Nobody said the speedometer had to have nice 0-20-40-60 kph nice round numbers.
4-contact someone at Transport Canada and discuss this unfair practice from BMW. Heck, he can pull out the list of recalls about this model, and recognize there is no open recall on your vehicle... bypassing BMW Canada altogether.

It's unfortunate we couldn't find an aftermarket faceplate for the 07+ speedometers.

 

Whit all the problem you wiil losse you money and time y not go this way.

i foud and 2007 mini cooper s for sale at 28.500$ whit 12.000 kms it in Gatineau,Hul. region.. if you need more info i will provide you whit the phone
of the deal


mc2

 

1- Buying a new instrument cluster and speedometer is MANDATORY. The BMW head office claims that it's the only way to ensure the "safe" hookup of daytime running lights, even though some American cars have DRL already hooked up as a dealer-installed option. They don't care if your US-bought car has DRL installed or not.... they consider a Canadian instrument panel mandatory. I've talked to a lawyer about this, and we both agreed that this practice meets the definition of extortion. It's just not worth my time and money to pursue this any further.

2- They will not let you perform any of these modifications yourself and they made it clear they would ignore any third party quotes. The work must ONLY be performed by BMW Canada, and they will only issue the recall clearance when the Canadian dealer provides a receipt to them for the work completed. The receipt MUST show the purchase of a new Canadian instrument panel and speedometer.

3- According to the RIV, the car is admissible as long as your speed is displayed in metric in some way, shape or form. With regards to the Mini, a simple flash of the computer would be sufficient to digitally display your speed in metric via the screen on the tachometer (I've confirmed this with the BMW dealership). Unfortunately, the BMW head office has once again interfered and mandated that the main analogue speedometer must be in metric. They (incorrectly) claim that this is the only way to pass the RIV inspection.

4- Yeah, I'd welcome anybody else on here to give the RIV a call to point out this unfair practice. Something tells me that calling a Canadian government agency and telling them to change their policy won't get you very far. I'd be especially curious to find out exactly how BMW Canada convinced them to give them special treatment by mandating "dealer only modifications" and the admissibility letter in order to pass inspection. It's pretty clear that the RIV's lax attitude on this matter has opened the door for BMW Canada to extort their customers.

Needless to say, I've backed out of the sale of my Mini Cooper S in New Jersey, and I was lucky enough to have an understanding dealer willing to give me back the deposit. It's worth pointing out that the instrument cluster repair was lower than the dealer first thought it was, and only came to around $1100. Had I still gone through with this import, the grand total for everything would have come to around $30,500 CAD, which would pretty much be the equivalent of buying the car in Canada and not having to pay any tax. However, I pretty much have ZERO trust left for BMW Canada, and I'm not willing to deal with these people anymore -- not now, not ever. There's no telling how much more they would try and gouge from me if I had gone through with the import.

In the future, I would possibly consider buying a cheaper Mini Cooper that's off of warranty. I still like the car... I'm just not willing to deal with the company.

 

get a 2005 S with a LSD.

 

Obviously Mini Canada don't want us bringing in USA cars, and I can't help but feel many other makers will follow suit. The good thing coming from all this is from a buyers side of things used cars prices are dropping and the dealers are offering incentives on new. In Mini Canada's defense I had a warranty issue with my 02 which they fixed on my "Mini next" warranty (they really didn't have to honour as my car has waaay too many aftermarket mods) but the fix was as a result of a defective wiring setup, they replaced the broken part on warranty but couldn't cover the defective wiring set up which was remedied by 04. I called Mini Canada to compain about this they sent me a $200 gift certificate to use for any Mini thing, my delaer said the wiring fix would cost less than that so I thought that was pretty cool. Mini Canada also covered a couple of items that could have easily been argued as being affected by the after market mods.

So I hope all this hasn't discouraged you from buying a Mini. I'm currently looking at an 06 MCS and selling my 02 partly because of my good experiences with my dealer and Mini Canada. Good luck and let us know what you get!

 

Yeah, I can totally understand why Mini Canada is attempting to discourage people from importing, but it doesn't give them the right to lie about modifications and give people the runaround. It's a free market -- if cars south of the border are cheaper, it should be our prerogative to take advantage of it. Mini has (in the past) imported their engines from Brazil to save money, and it should be our right to do the same.

Anyways, I'm going to stick with my piece of crap '95 Maxima for now. I just wanted to give a big thank you to everybody that has contributed to this forum, and I'll be sure to keep you guys posted if I try to purchase again.

 

MentalAnarchy,

Any manufacturer will make our life difficult if we try to import a car. Toyotas are great cars, but they strictly forbid US dealers from selling to Canadians, on the threat of losing their franchise. Honda Canada doesn't honor Honda US car warranties.

I wouldn't take BMW Canada's wrong behavior personally. It's just (dirty) business.

Look at my calculation on the first page. I now include 350 for the computer flashing, 1100 for the instrument cluster, 350 for the BMW Canada letter.

At 1CAD = 1USD the savings are 3612$
At 1CAD = 1.05 USD the savings are 4 984$
At 1CAD = 1.10USD the savings are 6 231$

I forecast that the US Fed bank will lower their interest rate again next quarter to offset the mortgage crisis, and the CAD should make another stint at 1.10USD like it did a few weeks ago.

I'm also going to hold on to my current car, a Mazdaspeed6 2006 and monitor the CAD closely.

 

Agreed. But there's a big difference: when Toyota says that their warranties are not valid across the border, they're at least being up front with people. Conversely, BMW Canada has taken the path of dishonesty -- this is not acceptable to me. I'm not taking this behavior personally, rather, if I don't trust a company, I'd expect problems with them in the future when it comes to honouring the warranty. There's just too much hassle and just too many surprises for me to keep putting my time into this.

A lot of people now believe that the Canadian economy can't survive if our dollar is at par or above. Even with the expected interest rate cut south of the border, I'd look for the dollar to remain below par for the foreseeable future. It was no coincidence that when the dollar hit 1.10, it dropped faster than it ever has in history -- investors quickly learned their lesson that 1.10 wasn't stable. Keep in mind that I'm NOT a business graduate -- I'm just telling you what I've been reading in the newspaper.

For that matter, you should also keep in mind that your bank will take a 1.5% overhead for the exchange. When all is said and done, I'd estimate you'll be getting 0.98 on the dollar. On the other hand, you can go ahead and take out the $300 charge for flashing the computer. The BMW dealership made it clear that the new instrument panel already took into account the additional computer work needed.

Haha... already sick of the Mazda, eh? :-)

 

Hiya

Nah, not sick of the Speed6, it's a great car. It's just that I have this green urge and want a luxury fuel-sipping car. There are very few in this market, and the Mini is about the only one in that segment. I wish we had the Audi A2 I saw in Norway (nice little small car).

I agree that the Canadian economy can't survive at 1.10USD. The delta is mainly driven by the delta in the government-issued interest rate. When the US lowers theirs, our dollar becomes more interesting, and to protect the economy the Canada Central Bank will lower it again. I don't think it'll stay long at 1.10USD but I wouldn't be surprised if it happens again.

Anyway, from what I was told a remote starter is very difficult to install in a Mini, therefore I will finish this winter with my remote-starter-equipped Speed6. I'm in no rush to change.

In fact my main issue with the US car thing is self-financing. My credit margin or a personal loan would have a higher interest rate than a car financing.