While just about anyone can sell a used car, selling a used car to enthusiasts is hard. They know their stuff, are aware of what to look for, and will not hesitate to call out any obvious major issues. It’s best to meet these knowledgable consumers where they are, but that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes a seller ends up being less-than-forthcoming and disrespectful. Case in point: A 2001 Toyota Altezza, the JDM equivalent of the Lexus IS 300, was up for auction on Cars & Bids and it went very poorly.
Right off the rip, there seems to be an obvious problem here, namely that passenger vehicles that don’t comply with Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards are only eligible to sail into the country once they turn 25, at least for the time being. While this Altezza’s 2001 date of manufacture was a while ago, it’s not quite a quarter-century ago. Decoding the chassis plate, all signs point toward this thing rolling off the line in April of 2001, meaning it’s still eight months away from being eligible for U.S. import under the 25-year rule.
For a vehicle less than 25 years old that someone’s seeking to bring to America, its eligibility must be petitioned to the U.S. government by a registered importer, and that petition is then published to the federal register. Once that happens, importation with modifications for federal compliance would have to be approved by NHTSA, and if that happens, the year, make and model would be listed in a publicly-available NHTSA spreadsheet. Currently, the Toyota Altezza doesn’t appear on the most recently published version of that spreadsheet, so it’s understandable that some Cars & Bids commenters questioned how the vehicle reached America. As one commenter asked:
Alright seller please explain how you got it here legally under the 25 year law. Was it brought into compliance with US laws? If so, what modifications did you make and where’s the paperwork for that? It’s certainly not on the show and display exemption list.
While it should’ve been theoretically easy to provide an explanation as that’s a fairly reasonable ask, the seller simply said that a state title is proof of legality:
The 25-year rule does apply, but that is only one pathway. Vehicles newer than 25 years can still be legally imported if brought into compliance through the proper process. That’s exactly what was done here. If the car were not in compliance, CBP [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] would not have cleared it, and the DMV would not have issued a valid U.S. title.
I don’t release my importer’s information — that’s proprietary — but I can provide proof of the U.S. title in my name. That is the only document you need in order to register and drive this vehicle in any state.
RoRo was just the shipping method, not a loophole. The fact that the car cleared Customs and was titled in the U.S. is the proof of its legality.
Here’s the thing: Plenty of vehicles under 25 years of age are imported under Show and Display, the Substantially Similar Clause that allows cars virtually identical to U.S.-spec models in both construction and powertrain in (such as those from Canada), or through a registered importer making genuine compliance modifications illegally end up in America — but a state title doesn’t guarantee you’ll be able to retitle a car in a different state. Add in how this Altezza is being sold from Florida with a Virginia title and Virginia plates, and plenty of questions still abound.
It feels reasonable to expect that if this Toyota were imported legally through a registered importer with the gauntlet of modifications needed to make a right-hand-drive chassis and a never-sold-in-America 1G-FE straight-six both NHTSA-legal and EPA-legal, there would be a paper trail the seller could be forthcoming about and post. If that happened, it would only help the value of the car, but the only document the seller was willing to share on the platform was the state title.
Then, they decided to reply rather rudely in the comments. In a now-deleted comment, the seller responded to a commenter asking for proof of the Altezza’s legality with “you’re still here i see lmao you’re boyfriend just broke up with me i suggest you do the same” which seems both vaguely homophobic and in syntax only previously seen from edgy 12-year-olds in “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare” Xbox Live chats.
While the above comments were removed, reasonable pressure on the seller continued, and this individual seemed really easy to rile up just by asking for the sort of proof a sensible buyer expects to be posted. When a commenter who offered to bid on the car contingent on proof of legality shared the list of sub-25-year-old cars that can be imported and modified to be legal, and pointed out that the Altezza wasn’t on it, the seller responded with “just stick around and hack everyones bidding up you’re good at this my guy,” followed by “keep that strong 4 figure bid in hand lol you know what you doing ????”
A bit more back-and-forth with that same commenter later, and the seller started attacking the commenter’s credibility. A comment like “you are in EVERY auction trolling and bidding on absolutely NOTHING! you have 0 wins please remove yourself” is not constructive, but evidence of paperwork would be.
Then, when that commenter shared a link to a story about illegally imported cars receiving state titles and why a state title isn’t proof alone that a car is legal, the seller replied “OMG please go !” What kind of a response is that?
Understandably, after a day or so of bidding, Cars & Bids noticed that things were getting ugly and decided to cancel the auction, providing the following response in the comment section:
Hello all! In order to ensure a smooth and positive auction experience, we have decided to cancel this auction.
We have asked the seller to provide the import paperwork and/or other evidence of this Altezza’s build date; if they are able to and this Altezza is legally in the U.S., we will work with them to relist the auction.
Thank you for your understanding. As always, we appreciate all of the engagement, feedback, and perspectives.
While this debacle may be over for now, that statement doesn’t answer questions on how an imported car that doesn’t appear to be at least 25 years old and therefore may not be legal in America ended up on the auction platform. We reached out to Cars & Bids founder and friend-of-The Autopian Doug DeMuro for a statement on the whole situation, and here it is:
The Cars & Bids community rocks! We love our people, and they identified some possible issues here — which is a huge benefit of having an auction comment section. Although we were working with the seller to try and determine the car’s legal status, that became irrelevant as the seller’s attitude progressed. Whether the car is legal or not, bad behavior has no place on Cars & Bids!
I do have to wonder: Why list it in the first place if there’s any ambiguity about the car’s status? When you build a community on the premise of offering a better way to buy and sell used cars, you’d think safeguards should be in place to offer a better experience than the normal used car classifieds. Between the unclear legality of the car and the seller’s behavior, this whole thing was a “train wreck,” as commenter bforbesut — who took the brunt of the seller’s rudeness — put it. To Cars & Bids’ credit, at least it listened and shut the whole thing down before things got worse.
Top graphic image: Cars & Bids
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I dont even understand why anyone would buy an Altezza when you can just buy an IS.
Was thinking the same thing. I don’t think it had a different motor in JDMland so what’s the point? Other than the fact that 99% of IS’s in the US are clapped out.
All this over a…Toyota? Ha ha ha ha
Cars and Bids has responsibility to list only legal to sell vehicles on it’s site. Cars and Bids failed. Never forget you pay 5% fee to buy a vehicle. For that privilege you get nothing in return.
Listed in the the first place because they want cash…
And another outlet is copying your homework again: https://www.carscoops.com/2025/08/why-a-toyota-altezza-auction-disappeared-from-cars-bids-mid-sale/
Oddly enough its where i saw it but they at least linked it this article first by my time of reading
I could probably get a title for my dog if I got the right person on the right day at the RMV. The feds probably don’t care but if they took a shine to you they def wouldn’t give a shit about a title.
The NY DMV has been very helpful to me in the past.
Once I ws trying to title a car I had inherited, and the paperwork was hopelessly messed up. The lady at the counter said, if your uncle had sold it to you, he would have filled out this form and because ot the value and age -bla bla bla- nobody would care.
Go see if you happen to have a signed form like this, and come back this afternoon. wink wink.
Even with all the paperwork in order, whether the car actually exists seems to be irrelevant.
Reminds me of this gem: No Reserve: 2007 BMW 116i 6-Speed for sale on BaT Auctions – withdrawn on August 24, 2016 (Lot #1,979) | Bring a Trailer
what is the tldr on this one? did a bit of scrolling and it’s unclear.
The 116 was never sold here so without looking at it, I’d guess it was also an illegal import trying to be passed off as legal.
In addition to what Brandon has said, a sleuth in the comments was able to uncover an unpaid (and undisclosed) lien on the car back in its home country, so the car was not only illegally imported, but also effectively stolen from the finance company.
now THAT is a story that I’m interested in
What is it with auctions turning into a nightmare lately? I’ve reached the point where I’ve stopped recommending any auction to my customers unless it’s an “I desperately need to get rid of this car and will run it through a local auction” situation.
Too many commentors, too few bidders.
Having bought and sold a few things on my local classifieds over the years, the last thing I ever thought was,
“Gee I wish there was a peanut gallery of commenters to rile up this experience’”
Buy an illegal Toyota, or just find some JDM Altezza badging and plop it on a cheap IS 300?
I was wondering if it was an manual, but no, auto..
Right? I was thinking the same. Why go to all the trouble when an IS300 is…the same?
It’s JDM bro.
Yeah, a title proves nothing. Ask the folks that bought Defenders from that importer (in Virginia, IIRC) who had the feds at their door confiscating their vehicles.
Wouldn’t check for legality be a step prior to making the auction public on the site?
C&B kinda went down the PE sinkhole. Lots of “enthusiat grade” junk being posted there
Yeah, that costs *money*
Love C&B and enjoyed the comments “community” when it started, but things have changed. Namely, since the outside investment, there is now increased pressure to grow revenue. How? List more things. You started seeing more questionable ‘enthusiast’ cars come in (looking at you Camrys and Tundras). They expanded the years they list (yay overpriced 60s Camaros). And now, things like this are getting through. This should never have been listed with some simple vetting, but instead it was listed with a shoulder shrug and a “meh, close enough.”
Take Pawn Stars…..as fake as that show is, one thing they are consistent on is that if anything is questionable, they won’t go near it. C&B should be doing the same. 24.5 yr old car? Not touching it. 25 yr old car? Give me proof of import date. Less than 25 years, not touching it.
This is the issue caused by a loophole that many enthusiasts seem to defend. The one where you can register a car with a sketchy title, would need an inspection in your state, or isn’t allowed in your state (such as kei cars), to then either drive it without out-of-state plates or launder the title so it can be transferred to a local registration.
Those loopholes will always be more valuable to scammers than to enthusiasts.
Because $.
Yeah, this is what I don’t like about these sites, they’re trying to create some sort of status to their auctions, like they are more enthusiast oriented than eBay or CL, but then they do stuff like this and, nah is all about the money.
I want to warn everyone about VINs and other ‘proofs’ that there are simple tools going around in China where you can etch a new vin in engine blocks and other body parts. They first grind off the real vin, then use a special metal CNCd template and use acid to etch in the new vin. Then they scuff it a bit, make it look and only if you’re an expert on these things you would notice it. They layman won’t notice and the direct DMV/whatever inspector won’t notice it neither. Especially if the rest seems to be correct. Any (foreign) paperwork can easily be forged, especially from older cars because back then things like fine printed anti-forgery texts or watermarks and what not just didn’t exist.
In the shady circuits people know where VINs are stamped in blocks and other places, so replying that ‘they should look for the other/backup VIN’ doesn’t work – these guys make perfect ‘copies’.
In China many cars have a ‘shadow’ driving around. With the SAME license plate and SAME vin. One was imported (often high end supercars, rolls royces, lambos and what not) and registered officially, paying a ton of taxes and the copy, the shadow came in a container. Plates then are duplicated, VINs etched and you have two identical cars driving around. Just don’t park them next to each other at a police station.
But how about cameras? Well right now there are tons of cameras, at toll roads and just normal cameras but those just … take pics. They don’t match license plates and think hey why did I just take two snapshots on this license plate ABC-123 500 miles apart within 5 minutes? They can do that of course, eventually, but not yet.
This was used for decades to save up to hundreds (!) of thousands of import duties and road tax and other stuff. Cars would be registered to small companies so nobody is personally liable and the small companies often had some smuck from the country side as the legal person/owner who was happy to get 200 bucks in his hand after he signed some papers.
Back to the auction – I could imagine C&B and BAT etc could force sellers to PUBLISH this information (of the legal import trail) with the car, so you don’t have to ask for it. Would save THEM and the buyers a lot of trouble since (obvious) illegal cars would have a hard time convincing people the paper trail would be real.
But then again as I wrote – papers can be forged as well and while say $5k or $15k USD isn’t that much in the US – it is a lot of money in other countries.
in china back in the late 90’s, people would buy a couple of few years old AMG’s or the likes. disasemble the cars, and put them into different containers and import them as junk parts, then put together again, paying almost no taxes, and be sold for 5X the cost. but after someone got caught and put on death sentence, i think they finally stop. those are stories i heard with retired officials in china while working for an importing(him like a consultant role), don’t know if he’s drunk enough to tell the truth or make it up on the spot.
Even if it wasn’t a death sentence (which sounds a bit high, but I’ve seen pics of people hanging – publicly – because they did something which in our eyes probably would be a hefty fine or a month in jail) – then you still don’t want to sit even just one month in a -Chinese- prison.
If you went through a super-secret proprietary process to import a car, congratulations, you smuggled it in illegally! If you legally import it, the documentation of that is not proprietary. It’s just legal documentation proving you followed the appropriate regulations when importing.
This was 100% the tell that this car was shady.
It really was. Importer told him they wouldn’t be associated with it so he couldn’t say anything without burning a bridge or getting in trouble
Cars and Bids? More like Crashes and Burns.
Doesn’t the rule go by build month? If so, it’s very possible for an ’01 to be legal in ’25
It does go by build month, but in this case it was an April 2001 built car. AFAIK it’s far less common for cars to be sold in Japan that were built in the year prior to model year, like we see a lot in the US, which means Model Year is a decent indicator for a quick sanity check.
Model year is a mainly US thing. In Japan, a car built in December 2024 is a 2024.
Kind of disappointing that Doug’s “response” was clearly AI generated. I guess he’s gotten too big to write emails himself?
It’s permeating everything. I’m starting to see it occasionally in business emails in my consulting line of work as well, even though everyone communicating is working on the same project team and knows each other virtually. You can definitely tell when an email comes through without a human “voice”.
It’s why typos and bad grammar don’t bother me as much anymore – at least I know someone used their own words.
I hate it so much. I was interviewing for a new role at work and one of the questions they asked was how I’m integrating AI into my daily work. They want people doing that crap.
I mean, it has its uses. Example, I can generally get decent HTML code based on pictures/written instructions provided to an AI that a year ago would have to have gone to a developer.
But that’s me using it to do things that aren’t in my lane in order to move more quickly. That’s much different than using it to do things I should be capable of doing myself… like typing up an email response to a journalist.
My daily work is compiling and sending reports that I can create much more quickly than I can check AI’s work on and responding to alarms and conditions on equipment that AI can’t monitor without significant changes to our whole operation.
I’m not going to say that there is no possible use for AI in my role, but I am certain it would take decades to see any labor savings if we have to do all the work to convert things to work with it.
And I have seen some of the results of people trying to incorporate AI into their general tasks without enough consideration. Writing a procedure? Here, let’s insert references to documents that sound like they might exist. Generating a report summary? Here’s some good information and some garbage that isn’t supported by the report. Have fun reading the full report to figure out which is which.
My son is a comp sci guy for a major non-tech company. They’ve recently subscribed to some kind of AI and they have to do training for it whether he likes it or not.
He’s commented that yeah, it could do some of his basic work, but by the time he has to spell out all of the parameters and then validate the results for errors, he would be long done the task doing it the old-fashioned way. I’m sure the Sales guy told the CEO it would improve worker productivity, but who’s going to take the hit when an inexperienced guy runs a bad AI script and shuts the whole system down?
This is a big risk IMO – forced integration without thought of negative consequences, assuming that it can only help.
I’ve got a relative who is an AI researcher/professor and has taught at a couple of well-known public universities. I see them sporadically every couple of years but will be soon. It’ll be interesting to see what their take is since I last spoke with them maybe a year ago. A lot has changed since then with public adoption for even mundane things.
(speaking of public adoption, anecdotally I just used Chat this morning to help nail down the best way to perform a cosmetic car mod. It helped me look for other ways people have done similar things, source various parts from other applications that would work for what I need, and tie it all together. 10 years ago that would have taken me days in forums finding the right people to respond and give ideas.)
Yes, I’ve done similar. I approach it like an advance search tool. Just like trying to find a YouTube video to do a car/appliance repair, you have to have enough knowledge to know if the person making the video actually knows what they are doing or just winging it.
If AI is scraping the internet to build it’s database, well, think of how much bogus/inaccurate info is already out there? Garbage in/garbage out.
This is why if I were an interviewer, I’d make the question more neutral: do you see any potential use for AI with this position?
That way it actually tells me what they think of it. Will they use it as a crutch? Or will they actually do some critical thinking of their own to use it as a tool in the right circumstances?
Shhh! Don’t let AI know that it needs to add typos and grammar errors to make its slop more believable!
Sadly AI is better than anything Doug Deturdo.
The dickbaggery and defensiveness of this guy is pretty astounding for someone actively trying to sell a vehicle. It’s one thing to be caught with your pants down. It’s another thing to draw attention to it by screaming “NO! NO MY PANTS ARE NOT DOWN!” Who in their right mind would see this guy’s responses and say “yeah, this seems like the sort of person I want to buy a sketchily imported vehicle from”.
It became the norm a while back on BaT. People asking legitimate questions get attacked because they are “just a commenter” and haven’t won an auction there. These sellers (usually a dealer of some sort) want the audience but do NOT want the community to point out any issues.
C&B should have absolutely flagged this and gotten reasonable validation of legality before going live. But just like BaT, they’re incentivized to post the listing and if the vehicle isn’t accurately represented, they hide behind their terms.
It isn’t an IS300 it’s an IS200.
1G-FE 1988cc
That may be part of the problem.
Probably someone stationed at Okinawa transferred to Norfolk. Tons of air force guys buy bmws in Germany and come back to VA with them.