Importing a 35d to Canada from US
 

Hello owners
Anyone who has done this before can you please let me know whether I have to do any modifications or any thing else to get the Canadian emission test passed?

Thank you in advance

riv.ca will help you

ave you bought your car yet?

Good question. I would have researched this before the purchase...

I talked to BMW directly and this is what I need to do

Emission test
Safety inspection
DRL
Recall clearance letter

And I am purchasing it tomorrow

And it is made in N.America,for the N.America market,so shouldnt be a huge hassle.

What year? Do you have pics of it?

its 2011

I only have pics from the dealer, I will take some when I picked it and post it here later

Contact BMW of Canada - they will advise you the mods. necessary.

So how much are you saving by buying in the US? If the car is under warranty will BMW Canada honor the warranty?

I needed none of that, lies I tell you!

I brought our 2010 35D in Dec 1, 2013

You do not need the recall letter, RIV will do it online for you.
The car has DRL and so you don't need them to code it, Canadian tire will check for DRL and it has them as long as you turn them on in idrive.
You will need an out of province inspection and we have emission test in Alberta so not sure on that.

You need all the paperwork faxed to the border 72 hours before you cross, don't mess this up. I spent about 20*30 minutes at both borders and then I was done, even got airmiles paying my GST :)

I have yet to ever go to or talk to a BMW dealer, the only thing they will advise you of is how they can make some money for nothing.

I just brought a '12 35D in last november. No mods needed. When you bring it in, just take it to the Canadian tire auto centre and they can do the emissions, safety, and RIV inspection all in one.

Heads up on faxing documents, I crossed in Detroit and almost didn't get through because they said they switched to email and no longer checked the fax machine. RIV website was incorrect and the CBP officer didn't care. Check with the office directly where you will be crossing.

How much did you guys save? On average by purchasing State side? I am not asking for final purchase price. Also, have you had any issues at dealerships not honouring warranty?

Thanks everyone for your answers, I can say I saved at least $4000.00 to $5000.00.

Great! Glad it worked out for you!

Yes on the email, I had issues during the trip and I had to stop and email pictures of docs on the trip like 3 times, at the end of the day I asked very nice if they could rush and within a few hours I had clearance so it all worked out awesome.

In my local area the same car was 15k more and one in Ontario was 8k more, my flight was $254 and fuel was $189 so worth the trip for me.

So what would a 2011 35d loaded with 70,000 miles except comfort seats sell for in Canada? If you shop these right you can pick them up here for $30K to $35K FSBO out of warranty. Could this be the genesis of a business?

Not unless the dollar gets better, I bought at about .96 and at .91 it is less worth it.

As things are FINALLY picking up down here, the spread willget larger. I remember not too long ago Loonie was worth $0.70. The value pf your money stayed the same but the good ol' US dollar crashed. Apparently you can't kill the US economy but there seem to be a lot of people who want to test this hypothesis.

I think your being optimistic and when was our dollar .70 in recent history?

It's been 5 years since the meltdown. Such an event will probably take 10 years to fix, so we're at the halfway mark in my opinion. Devastated communities all over the place, it's a mess. So cautiously optimistic, i would say. The major indexes only gained about 10% from pre-crash levels, so we're all losing money big time weather we like it or not as it should be 7-8 % per year. The US dollar spiked about 10-12 years ago and for a while it was worth a whole lot of money. Been downhill ever since...