How this is calculated

What this site computes

Import eligibility is arithmetic on two things: the date a vehicle was built, and the rule the destination country applies. The rules are short and public. The hard part is that each country measures age differently, and the United States applies three separate tests at once.

The three US tests

• DOT / NHTSA, 25 years. Measured from the date of manufacture. This is the test that decides whether the vehicle may enter the country at all.
• EPA, 21 years. Measured as year of entry minus calendar year of production. Month of manufacture is irrelevant, so it always opens on 1 January.
• Section 232 tariff, 25 years. Also a calendar-year test, so it also opens on 1 January — four to eleven months before the DOT rule opens for the same car.

Because the tariff test and the DOT test use different measurements, there is a window at the start of each year where a vehicle is exempt from the 25% duty but still cannot lawfully be imported. We flag that window explicitly wherever it applies.

How we handle uncertain build dates

Most compliance plates show only a month and year. NHTSA says the 25-year period “runs from the date of the vehicle's manufacture” — a day-level test — but no official source says what to do when the day is unknown. The common industry practice of using the first of the month is convention, not published rule.

So we do not print a single confident date. We show the month the vehicle could become eligible, and separately the date it is certainly eligible. Plan a shipment around the second one.

Model pages versus individual cars

A model built over several years does not become eligible all at once. Each vehicle page computes the rules for the oldest cars of that model, and the summary table shows when the last cars open. Your particular car sits somewhere between the two — which is why the build plate matters.

What we will not do

• We do not publish a date we cannot trace to a government source.
• We do not resolve an ambiguity in the law by picking the answer we prefer. Where the sources conflict, both readings are shown.
• We do not tell you a vehicle is legal to register. Import clearance and state or provincial registration are different things.