How a Ferrari-Obsessed Bureaucrat Gave America the 25-Year Rule

For those who weren’t alive or paying sufficient attention, it’s hard to explain how grim the Seventies and Eighties were for car enthusiasts. Particularly for those with any awareness of foreign cars—for instance, the typical Road & Track reader. Newly enacted U.S. emissions and safety regulations choked the performance of cars sold here, while shrinking R&D budgets limited consumer choice as big manufacturers certified fewer models and engine families for sale. Meanwhile, several smaller foreign brands bowed out of the U.S. market entirely.

This story originally appeared in Volume 18 of Road & Track.

For many years, those who wished to partake in tasty automotive hardware sold elsewhere had three basic choices. They could (1) expend considerable effort and sums “federalizing” non­compliant cars from abroad, (2) emigrate, or (3) lump it.

Then, in 1988, came a quiet thunderbolt: the Imported Vehicle Safety Compliance Act, also known as the 25-year rule. An amendment to the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966, it “exempts non-conforming foreign motor vehicles that are 25 years old or older (‘classic or antique’) from the restrictions imposed by this Act.” It was accompanied in due course by a maddeningly non-harmonizing regulatory amendment from the EPA that permitted the entry of non-­emissions-­compliant machinery at least 21 years old.

The effect of the rules would not be realized for some years, but beginning in the late Nineties, the amendment’s impact became apparent. Forbidden fruit—Alfa Romeo Montreals, late-model Fiat Dinos, MGB GT V8s from the early Seventies—could be imported to America for nothing more than the price of purchase, applicable duties, and shipping fees.

Today the rule’s ramifications are even clearer, as a recent visit to the docks at Port Newark in New Jersey (to pick up a 1997 Renault Twingo out of France) confirmed. The port was alive with the sights and sounds of exotic and oddball foreign cars. A steady stream of 25-year-old or older imports from Europe, Japan, South America, and elsewhere join us every day to make our roads a little more interesting.

On the day of our visit, old-school Land Rovers and first-generation Minis predominated, along with Japanese domestic-market offerings: right-hand-drive Land Cruisers, Nissan Patrols and Skylines, diminutive kei trucks, and micro–sports cars. We also spied a few formerly verboten Ferraris, a right-hand-drive Ford Escort RS, a Citroën CX, an MGF, and a Lancia Delta Integrale. Just another day at the docks—rare and desirable machines, all noncompliant when new, yet all now perfectly legal.

No discussion of the 25-year rule is complete without reference to the situation predating its adoption. Dick Fritz, an engineer working for the famous Ferrari importer and dealer Luigi Chinetti in the Sixties, became immersed in helping the chronically underfunded Italian sports-car maker meet then-new U.S. emissions and safety regulations. He left in 1976 to found ­AmeriSpec Corporation, one of the few outfits that enabled “gray market” machines (cars imported outside the manufacturers’ American sales arms) to meet federal emissions and safety standards. Others often fudged the numbers, an infraction that ultimately sent several rule breakers to jail. In the process, Fritz visited Washington often, helping the DOT and EPA devise procedures and protocols instructing would-be converters how to bring cars into compliance.