garmen

Hi all!!

I'm Garmen, and I'm writing from the Basque Country, in Northern Spain.
I own a Land Rover Series 88 from '78 and I travel and practise offroad with it.

I'm planning to make a trip in North America, visiting Canada, USA and Mexico and I have want to buy a car, modify it and make miles with it.
I came to a Jeep forum because I thougth that I could be a good option to make a overlander, although maybe a Land Cruiser or a F150 would be better. Anyway, since I can't by a car in USA as tourist, I checked and it seems that I can do that in Canada.

My principal questions are those:
1) ¿can I buy a car in Canada as a tourist?
2) Is there any vehicle inspection? I mean, can I modify a car (33 tyres, winch, roofrack...) and drive without problem or i have to do some paperwork or any vehicle inspection?
3) Wath vehicle would you buy for a overlander? I thougth on a CJ7 or something like that, but I don't know the second hand vehicle market in Canada.

Thank you very much,
and I apologyze for my poor English.

A photo of the 88 in action:


Garmen

AutoJunkieMan

OK well from the looks of it your going to come to canada and you want to temporarily "own" a vehicle. Well if your buying a used vehicle. It will require tax, safty inspection, and emissions testing done with the sale of the vehicle. Will need registration done, and plates need to be put onto it registered to the owner (you). You will require insurance also in order for all of this to work, can't register a vehicle that isn't insured.

So pretty much you need Licence to get Registration, Emissions and Safty to get Registration, and insurance to get registration.

Then when all of that is done, you can do whatever you want with the vehicle it will have it's "plate" or "sticker" for 1 year or 2 depending on which one you buy, then every 3 years will require emission testing if the vehicle was made after 1987. If your going to just buy it keep it for a few months then dump it / sell it, you are going to be spending more money then you'll get back out of it 100%.

Anything else you need to know?

garmen

Thank you AutoJunkieMan!!!

Basically that was wath I wanted to know, the procces of owning a vehicle in Canada.
The antoher option was to buy a car in Mexico, and maybe I will be simpler, but I doesn't seem very complicated in Canada.

Thank you again,
Garmen

AutoJunkieMan

No problems.

oldfart

Regulations vary province to province.

I would suggest contacting the CAA. Canadian Automobile Association (they must have a web site). They should be able to give you all the information you need. They can also provide maps and other information.


Nice truck, your English is much better than my German.

AutoJunkieMan

That's true, the regulations i stated are for Ontario as far as I am aware. Can't say I am well versed with the other provinces.

Michel347

I tried to find some informations about this, not really easy. For the insurances, it looks pretty simple, there is insurances vrokers that do this, biggest problem seems to be with the registrations as you need to give them an address in Canada, and this is where my search ended up, I haven't been able to really find how you can do this. Most probably you need to give an address of someone you would know here. May be you could get more information from your embassy or here on the CAA web site.
CAA National