Georgia’s Governor Vetoes The Imported Car/Kei Legalization And The Reason Is Really Weird

Car enthusiasts in Georgia just suffered a depressing loss in the battle against imported car bans. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp just vetoed House Bill 308, the bill that would have legalized Kei cars in Georgia. The reason why actually had nothing to do with Kei cars at all, but street takeovers. Perhaps weirder is that while everyone may be hurting now because of this, the veto might actually be a good thing in the long run. Here’s what madness is going down in Georgia right now.

Georgia’s war against Kei cars has been raging for nearly two years. In fall 2023, the Georgia Department of Revenue, Motor Vehicle Division, issued a notice to all of its county car registration offices. According to the state, it had long officially banned Kei vehicles–the smallest class of road-legal cars in Japan–over a decade ago. However, enforcement had been shoddy. Countless Kei owners had no problems registering their cars.

That changed in 2021 after the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA) recommended that all states ban all vehicles that were not originally built to Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS). That year was when Georgia tried to get more serious about wiping Kei cars from its roads. Still, the state says, it found that even two years later, its tag offices were ignoring the rules and still issued license plates to Kei owners all over the state.

The Letter

The May 2023 letter marked the start of a hard crackdown on Keis in Georgia. Not only did Georgia instruct its tag offices to cut it out, but Georgia also punished the owners of those Kei vehicles by revoking their titles and license plates.

Unfortunately, like so many states that have banned Keis, Georgia also didn’t even know what a Kei was. The state told tag offices to identify a Kei based on the presence of a short VIN. The problem with that is that every Japanese market vehicle has a “short VIN” (actually a chassis number) regardless of its actual size or class. A big Toyota Century has the same short VIN as a Kei car.

The state also offered guidance for attempting to identify Keis older than 1981, since U.S. market cars didn’t have 17-digit VINs either until then. For that, county tag offices are supposed to plug a suspected Kei VIN into a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration VIN decoder, and if it comes back as invalid for road use, the tag office can assume the vehicle to be a Kei.

Enthusiasts struck back swiftly. Tatsu Kazuya, owner of Jora Imports in Georgia, engaged the help of Lefkoff Law to sue the state. Others worked with their lawmakers in an attempt to enact change.

In February 2024, Rep. Jay Collins introduced House Bill 1239. His bill, which received Republican support, called for the legalization of “miniature on-road” vehicles, and Rep. Collins argued to the House Motor Vehicles Committee that Keis had all of the lighting and other requirements for a car to operate on roads in Georgia.

The lawsuit was put into a holding pattern while this bill worked its way through the Georgia legislature. Sadly, HB 1239 died, but in early 2025, the bill came back for the new session as HB 308. This time, HB 308 passed its way through the House and the Senate, gaining major bipartisan support, just to die on Gov. Kemp’s desk on May 14. The bill was promising, then it fell apart right at the finish line.

Street Racing In A Kei Bill?

What caused the veto was something strange. The bill’s original purpose was to grant legality to Kei vehicles in Georgia. However, in late March 2025, the Georgia Senate added completely unrelated language to HB 308, stating:

Said title is further amended in Code Section 40-6-390.1, relating to reckless stunt driving, by adding a new subsection to read as follows:
(b.1)(1) As used in this subsection, the term ‘intelligent speed assistance device’ means a device designed to be installed within a motor vehicle to actively monitor and prevent the operator from exceeding a preset speed. Such term shall not include any technology provided by the motor vehicle manufacturer as a component of a motor vehicle that controls or affects the speed of a motor vehicle.
(2) Upon conviction of a violation of this Code section and in addition to the punishment provided for in subsection (a) of this Code section, a court shall be authorized to order the installation of an intelligent speed assistance device upon the motor vehicle operated by the offender during such violation when the offender is the registered owner of such motor vehicle as shown in the records of the Department of Revenue. Such order shall set the maximum speed limit for an intelligent speed assistance device installed upon a motor vehicle at a speed limit of no greater than 20 percent above the posted speed limit.

In short, the Senate added an anti-street takeover provision into a bill that was otherwise just about Kei cars. Now, something like this is common. Bills often carry more than one completely different change. If these bills go into law, they have the chance of knocking out more than one problem at the same time.

The addition of the intelligent speed assistance devices didn’t stop the bill from passing, either. But it’s clear that Gov. Kemp wasn’t happy. In his veto, Gov. Kemp commented:

House Bill 308 would, among other things, empower trial courts to order the installation of an “intelligent speed assistance device” when the registered owner of a vehicle used that vehicle to commit the offense of reckless stunt driving. While this provision is well-intentioned, as such devices could be a valuable tool for preventing street racers from becoming repeat offenders, the bill does not provide the necessary infrastructure to ensure this punishment would be consistently and effectively applied.

For the foregoing reasons, I VETO HOUSE BILL 308.

The street racing aspect of HB 308 seemingly took over the bill’s original goal, which was about Keis. Even when Axios reported on HB 308, there was no mention of the Kei part of the bill.

The Dirty Fine Print

With that being said, the Kei part of the bill wasn’t really a win. On one hand, the bill called for the legal recognition of Kei vehicles. Then, the bill continued with more good news, saying that Keis that are at least 25 years old will be considered to be motor vehicles and will be registered. Great! But then there was this:

Miniature on-road vehicles shall be operated only on highways that are part of a municipal street system or county road system, provided that such operation has not been prohibited through ordinance or resolution within a local jurisdiction, and shall be authorized to cross highways that are part of the state highway system.

This section would have severely limited the operation of Keis. Basically, Keis would only be allowed on the same kind of slow, small-town, and rural roads that low-speed vehicles, golf carts, or side-by-sides might be found on. Georgia is absolutely covered in state roads, which would have meant that, if passed, lots of Kei owners wouldn’t have been able to legally leave home because their driveway ends at a state road.

The bill got some support from enthusiasts. Some enthusiasts were just happy to have any kind of legal recognition for their cars. Others thought of the bill as more of a loss than a win.

The problem is that while having some legality at all is technically better than a ban, having only partial legality codified into law would have brought on a huge headache. If enthusiasts want more freedom to drive their cars, they would have to fight to change the law. Sadly, the enthusiasts of Maine –a state that, in summer 2021, passed a law banning all vehicles not built to FMVSS–know how hard to change a law once it’s passed.

Since summer 2021, the states of New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Michigan, Massachusetts, Texas, Illinois, and Colorado have joined Maine in either passing restrictions on Keis or outright bans, with varying levels of success in enforcing such policies and laws. In 2024, enthusiasts in Texas, Massachusetts, and Michigan successfully beat their bans. Here in 2025, Colorado became the first state since 2019 to protect Keis in law, so AAMVA’s recommendations cannot easily lead to a ban.

All of these states are following direct recommendations issued by the now-infamous American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA), a non-profit and non-governmental lobbying organization run by DMV administrators and law enforcement in all 50 states, Washington D.C., Canada, Mexico, and the Virgin Islands.

While AAMVA recommends that every state in the nation ban any and all vehicles not built to FMVSS, it also specifically targets Kei trucks as being particularly unsafe. I have written extensively about AAMVA, click here to read more.

The Path Ahead

In the short term, this veto is going to cause a lot of heartache. Georgia’s enthusiasts have been fighting their state for two years, and now, with the veto, they’ve been brought back right to the start with the state’s hard ban still in place. They’ve invested thousands of dollars into this battle, and it must feel like their wheels are spinning.

However, there is still hope. Georgia’s enthusiasts can still revisit their lawsuit. They may even be able to educate their lawmakers on why Keis should not be treated like golf carts. A future bill could be less restrictive on Keis. Times are dark now, but they don’t have to be going forward.

Sadly, the organizers of the original lawsuit against Georgia say that they may need to launch another GoFundMe. Funding has run dry, and there’s likely going to be a long and drawn-out battle ahead. Further details haven’t been revealed yet. As of right now, it seems Georgia’s import enthusiasts are just mourning the loss and venting frustration of having spent two years just to be brought back to the start.

We’ll be monitoring this situation as Georgia regroups for the next stage of its fight. Next month, the enthusiasts in Illinois will be making their voices heard during a hearing with the state on June 6.