At the end of March, Japanese import car enthusiasts in Illinois began reporting that the state had revoked their cars’ license plates and titles without any real explanation. Illinois has been revoking the plates and titles to all kinds of legally imported cars, too, not just Kei cars. Now, we have an explanation for why the state is doing this, and it doesn’t make a single bit of sense. Here’s how you can help me fight back.
Things have gotten worse since my first report on this issue on April 1. I’ve lost count of how many enthusiasts have contacted me, saying that they, too, had gotten a letter from the Illinois Secretary of State that indicated that the state had revoked the license plates bolted to their legally imported cars. The spread of cars has been sad, too, as the state has revoked license plates for everything from Honda Acty Kei trucks to Toyota Crown sedans.
Somehow, it gets even worse. The state isn’t just revoking license plates, but it’s also sending these enthusiasts branded titles with a mark saying ‘Not Eligible For Registration.’ This title brand effectively turns these imported cars into off-road-only vehicles, even if they’re clearly not. The brand also means that an Illinois resident may have a hard time selling their car to a resident in a more import-friendly state.
Illinois Bans More Than Just Keis
Unfortunately, it appears that Illinois also has no real idea what it’s doing. So, its ban, which the state has published no public-facing statements or documents about, is worse than the bans that some other states in America are doing.
Illinois is only the latest state to join the long list of states that, since 2021, have imposed either full bans or heavy restrictions on over-25-year-old imported vehicles. The state joins Maine, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Colorado. Previously, the list included Michigan, Texas, and Massachusetts, but enthusiasts in those states have successfully reversed bans. It was previously thought that enthusiasts in Colorado also beat a ban, but the state merely changed gears and decided to do its ban in secret rather than tell the public about it.
Back in late March and early April, there wasn’t much information on the ground. Here’s what I reported:
For years, Illinois has largely treated Kei cars, vans, and trucks like any other car, issuing regular, unrestricted license plates to these vehicles. I’ve been able to register Kei cars like a normal car, as have a few of my friends. But even then, I say “largely” because Illinois hasn’t been clear on its stance about Kei vehicles.
Some people have reported registering their vehicles and getting license plates, but also getting a title marked as ‘Not Eligible For Registration.’ Weirdly, some of these people are able to continue renewing their registration stickers as normal, but they were otherwise stuck with a title that branded their vehicles as off-road-only. This is similar to how other states like Pennsylvania have handled Kei trucks. But this isn’t universal. Some folks get regular titles.
At any rate, it appears that Illinois might be ramping up efforts to remove Kei vehicles from its roads. Last year, someone on Reddit reported having their license plates revoked. Now, as of about a week ago, more reports are flooding in. One of those people is Johnathan, and he published the letter he received from the state of Illinois:
That letter above is for a Toyota Crown, which isn’t even close to a Kei vehicle. I have since received more of these letters from other individuals. All of them say the same thing.
Being able to use these vehicles off-road isn’t even much of a consolation prize. Illinois has few off-road trails, and the state is equally barren of off-road parks. By marking an imported car as ineligible for registration, the state is making countless vehicles functionally useless. Granted, it’s not like you’d want to take a Toyota Crown off-road, anyway.
This Didn’t Come Out Of Nowhere
If you’ve missed my previous coverage, you might be wondering why imported cars are such a huge deal in a random assortment of states. Well, that’s because every state in America is a member of the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA).
AAMVA’s mission is to standardize the driving laws across America. On the surface, that’s a great cause. Driving in Illinois shouldn’t be meaningfully different than driving in New Mexico. However, AAMVA’s efforts also include pushing states to ban certain vehicles for what the organization claims to be for safety reasons. If you’ve caught my previous coverage, read on. If not, here’s a quick run through why AAMVA is a huge player in car bans:
Back in the summer of 2021, the state of Maine launched what is currently the worst car ban in America. The state passed a law to change the classification of what can be considered to be a road vehicle. As of that summer, the state of Maine now says that any vehicle not built to Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) will be barred from public roads.
Maine passing this as a law has thus far prevented enthusiasts from overturning the ban. As I have reported in the past, Maine did this based on guidance issued by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA). The organization is a non-governmental, non-profit lobbying organization composed of motor vehicle and law enforcement administrators and executives from all 50 states, Washington D.C., Canada, Mexico, and the Virgin Islands. Its core goal is to motivate the states to standardize driving laws across America.
AAMVA does not have the power to create policy, but the people who run it do. The organization first recommended the banning of mini-trucks speed-limited to 25 mph back in 2011, based partly on crash testing conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Somewhere along the way, AAMVA decided to attack all gray-market imported cars. Many of those vehicles were Kei vehicles, which are just as small as off-road-only mini trucks, but built for road use. In 2021, AAMVA decided to come down on anything not built to FMVSS specs, but specifically targeted Keis.
Finally, An Explanation
One of the worst parts of this has always been the fact that Illinois has never really explained itself. Most states that have banned imported vehicles can point to a law or a policy. Illinois hasn’t done that.
Since publishing my original piece, I have left the Illinois Secretary of State Title Division no fewer than three emails and at least 10 phone calls. I even got desperate enough to call into the IL SOS phone bank, hoping to get anyone willing to talk to me. The results have been aggravating. Many phone call attempts resulted in a busy signal, so I didn’t even get the chance to leave a voicemail. When I did get to talk to a human, I was always advised that a supervisor or director would return my call, email me, or return contact in some manner. This has never happened.
Thankfully, I am not alone. Other enthusiasts in Illinois have also been calling and emailing the Secretary of State. Finally, one person, Robert, finally got a statement from Illinois:
Unless legislation is passed that specifically allows for Kei Trucks to be registered in IL, our default is that it is not eligible for registration pursuant to IVC Section 3-401(c-1) as an off-highway/non-highway vehicle.
Excellent! So, let’s look that law up. What the IL SOS is referring to there is 625 ILCS 5/3-401(c-1)(1), which is what I guessed was the state’s justification in my original piece. This part of the ILCS is known as the Illinois Vehicle Code, or IVC. I apparently correctly guessed this to be the justification because this is the only part of the Illinois Compiled Statutes that even remotely comes close to describing this situation:
(c-1) A vehicle may not be registered by the Secretary of State unless that vehicle:
(1) was originally manufactured for operation on highways;
(2) is a modification of a vehicle that was originally manufactured for operation on highways; or
(3) was assembled from component parts designed for use in vehicles to be operated on highways.
It is the state’s opinion that a JDM import was not originally manufactured for operation on a highway. Now, you might be scratching your head there because a Toyota Crown is definitely not an off-road car. The Illinois Vehicle Code then goes to great lengths to say that for a vehicle to be legal in Illinois, it needs to have equipment complying with Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. The logic seemingly used by Illinois and other states is that since JDM vehicles were never built to FMVSS, so they are not road vehicles.
This logic blows open the door for so many issues. American cars built before 1968 don’t comply with FMVSS, nor do cars imported from Europe. Yet, I’ve yet to receive a report from a Renault Twingo owner of their car getting banned. Doing this on the basis of safety is also absurd when Illinois isn’t even a state that requires motorcyclists to wear a helmet.
The law, as stated above, has been on the books in Illinois for over two decades. Yet, this didn’t become that big of a deal for the owners of imported cars until more recently. Thus, Illinois, like Rhode Island, Colorado, and other states with active car bans, is just making a new DMV policy and justifying it by tying that policy to an old law. This avoids the lengthy process taken by Maine, whose legislature went through the work of codifying its imported car ban into a new law.
Fighting Back
Having a confirmation of the state’s reasoning is a huge deal. Now, we can formulate a plan to attack it. As of right now, a bunch of Illinois-based enthusiasts have banded together, and our plan is to follow the lead set by Texas. David McChristian, the founder of Lone Star Kei, has given us a roadmap to hopeful success.
McChristian and his fellow enthusiasts called at least 180 Texas state representatives in addition to operatives at the TX DMV. The Texas enthusiasts also had a handy standard letter to send to representatives to educate them about these vehicles. Instead of fighting everyone in the government, McChristian allied with politicians to help advance the cause.
As a result, the enthusiasts in Texas became the first to beat a car ban since the 2021 AAMVA recommendations. Wins in Massachusetts and Michigan followed. So, it’s clear that Lone Star Kei has a good strategy here. I have been chatting with McChristian this month to help Illinoisans plan a path forward. Right now, it looks like we’re going to just start calling up every government official we can find.
Our plan is to educate lawmakers on what Keis are, how they’re not mini-trucks, and how keeping them legal would benefit the state, small businesses, and other parties. The state really has nothing to lose by keeping Keis legal. I mean, we want to give the state tax money! My wife, an attorney, will also help draw up a handy letter that we can send in addition to phone calls. In the very worst case, we’re also more than ready and willing to sue the state for the privilege to drive imported cars in Illinois.
If you’re a car enthusiast in Illinois and you’re interested in joining our fight, join the Illinois Kei TRUCK/VAN/CAR Facebook group, where some organizing has already started. Hopefully, we can join our friends in Texas, Michigan, and Massachusetts with a nice victory.
The vibe I’m getting from the letters shown above is the IL Secretary of State does not have someone knowledgeable about cars working on this. It’s like they had some data jockey run a query searching for Honda or Toyota JDM vehicles and sending all the owners these mini-truck letters, even if the car is a luxurious Crown sedan.
I’m also not impressed by the IL Secretary of State’s registration of electric vehicles. I have seen so many EVs driving around the state with regular license plates instead of EV plates. EVs have higher registration fees since they don’t pay gasoline tax. The EV owners with regular plates are cheating the state and its taxpayers. ILSOS could easily query their database for EVs that have regular plates assigned to them instead of EV plates and go after these people. But no, they’d rather go after the JDM car owners who registered their vehicles properly.
They don’t seem to know what they’re doing over there, nor do they seem to understand cars.
I hope in Canada we are too busy with elections, housing, immigration and Trump so RHD cars will not be banned….
we couldn’t even change the license plate design in Ontario successfully….
I am not surprised, Illinois is run by Democrats
The current states banning them are a mix of swing, Democrat, and Republican states. Looking at the facts, political affiliation isn’t the determining factor, ignorance of JDM vehicles and a lobbyist group are.
Give ’em hell, Mercedes!
Bureaucrats without a clue under influence of a wannabe professional association formed from the foregoing pool of the clueless.
Which unlike the title of this article – actually makes a lot of sense. If a car wasn’t made to US regulations for on-highway use it isn’t allowed to be used on the highway in the US. That is a very logical and simple rule. It should apply to all vehicles from any country.
Saying that vehicles that where made prior to FMVSS are still registered don’t mean that we should register vehicles made after it existed. Just as we don’t hold cars made prior to emission standards to modern standards. It is the accepted rule that we hold vehicles to the regulations in place at the time they were made.
Just because there are old cars on the road that that are not safe and are gross polluters doesn’t mean that we should keep adding to that pool of unsafe and gross polluting vehicles. It is the general rule that we allow them to continue to be registered with the idea that the pool of old vehicle will decline each year as they age out and are taken off the road. The fleet will steadily get cleaner and safer over time.
If we allow new vehicles to steadily be imported and grow that pool the current system breaks down. Illinois has areas that do not meet federal air quality standards. It makes no sense to import other countries’ old cars
The difficulties and specificity of searching for, importing, and maintaining a vehicle never made for the US makes your argument of ~tainting the market~ null by statistical standards. The number of owners inconvenienced is minuscule, however the impact on those individuals’ lives by tone-deaf litigation is massive. No one in a modern car is at risk of injury from a kei truck impact. These drivers are putting their lives in their own hands – that’s all.
Its the same as riding a motorcycle – another market I’m sure they’re looking to eliminate in order to turn the population into a boring, gelatinous, homogenized mass.
Plus for use of gelatinous..
Every person in the city breaths the air that comes out of the tailpipe of a 25+ year old car. Even when new they are gross polluters compared to a modern car.
A 2000 Suzuki Swift 1.0L is certified at 11x more NOx and 6x more CO than a 2024 Ford F150 5.0L truck.
Just because there are old cars on the road that that are not safe and are gross polluters doesn’t mean that we should keep adding to that pool of unsafe and gross polluting vehicles.
Right, hypocrisy, like false equivalencies, and generalizations are also bad, they should be banned as well.. Oh wait…
Right on brother!!! Why do people keep trying argue safety standard and cite motorcycles, which are a different class of vehicle (logical fallay of Unequal Comparision), but what is equal and evident, if one frequents r/motocycles, is there are 25+ YO motorcycle imports that can’t be registered for on-road use.
The thing is entropy still applies here. Like, sure, you’re bringing in a Honda City that does not adhere to modern emissions standards. But in the thirty seven years since that Honda City was manufactured, over 60% of it’s class contemporaries manufactured in the U.S. have been permanently removed from the road. The lifetime emissions of that one car being imported is a rounding error. Even if you imported one hundred of them, enough cars of their age have been permanently removed that their total emissions are still a rounding error. This is like saying a few motes of pollen that have gotten into the chlorinated pool water have disastrously contaminated it.
Sorry but no. The idea that because most US built cars from 1990 have aged out and been scraped means you can import 1990 cars from Japan to replace makes no sense if the goal is cleaning up our air. The fleet has to get steadily cleaner just to keep air quality the same with the steady increase in urban populations and vehicle miles driven.
Then there is the fact that these old cars are gross polluters. As I pointed out above even a 2000 Geo Metro 1.0L puts out 11x the NOx per mile vs a new Ford F150 5.0L V8. Why should the State of Illinois allow you to import and drive around an old car that is equal to driving 11 new trucks? Sorry but no. That makes not sense from a community perspective.
I live in Oklahoma and can only assume they’re going to do something like this eventually as our lawmakers basically just copy whatever Texas does… But worse.
I wonder if there is an advantage to getting preemptive, or just let sleeping dogs so their thing…
Any state that allows registration of motorcycles but not imported vehicles and tries to point to safety as the issue is lying. As Mercedes has uncovered in the past it’s all about the $$ and domestic manufacturer lobbying groups being anti-cheap imports, period. Plain and simple. Manufacturers have lobbying groups/ non-profit organizations, citizens just have a single vote each.
Or it is about emissions.
Not at all. If it were about emissions, the IL Secretary of State would say so. The guy is a brown-noser who would want publicity for “green” policies.
First the Springfield bosses came for the helmets but I didn’t speak out because I don’t have a motorcycle. Then they came for the Kei’s. Now I think it’s time to burn the establishment down!
Loosely translated from some German guy.
Ah yes, JDM market cars are a safety hazard yet the Chicago Cutlass is totally safe to be on all public roads.
Or any vehicle from Michigan held together with bailer twine, rust, and duct tape?