Am on a South American vacation and found this Chev Coupe in Montevideo Uruguay. Chile had nothing old on the road and very little in Buenos Aries. Montevideo appeared to be poorer and there was some old tin a 1950 ish Ford 3 ton, some chev trucks from say 1950 /´51. and this Coupe. Not sure what year. It was for sale but not sure how much. It was well used but didn´t look like total ****.
When you try doing it, make sure you check for ***les and even VIN's. Some of those countries had no ***les and even no VIN numbers during the '50s and '60s, I know a guy who bought some '60s muscle cars in Peru and had them restored locally (Local as in Lima, Peru), then shipped them to the US and tried to get ***les.. no luck. Some of them didn't have a VIN anymore, and some seemed to have never had them (even tried the acid trick to find the number) and then on others the local (Peru) restorers had removed the part that had the VIN on it at one time, because it was not important to them there. The one car that seemed clean, with a "normal" US vin, came back as stolen, from a new car lot in Arizona, somewhere in the '60s. So in other words, if you think importing from Mexico is a big deal, don't try going further south, probably not worth it.
Check out the rules and regulations of exporting a car before you buy anything in a South American country. The rules can be complicated, and are designed to keep the cars in their country. Probably best to find someone from the country you want to buy in that is in the export business. There is a fellow in Argentina named Kaplan I believe who has exported a lot of vintage cars from that country and Uruguay. I know of a fellow locally who bought three cars that way, and the export fees added a lot to the transaction. He was happy with the cars though.
I brought 18 Vincent-HRD's out of Argentina.They were mostly in pieces.While I was there I looked at a lot of cars too.There are a lot down there.The Argentines are some of the biggest gear heads you will ever meet.Old machinery migrates down there.I even went to a cool car show there. My experince in Argentina is that they do NOT screw with VIN#'s.It can get them years in the can.The main problem with a lot of machinery down there is that they couldn't get parts and had to improvise ala Cuba.Some of those people are extremely clever.After 91 it was legit to export.Prior to that there were additional "ahem" paper work requirements. paper with pictures of Ben Franklin.....
Seems those "permits" are quite commonplace - they're often needed in Africa too I wish we would have had some laws making it tougher to export - not a whole lot of old tin left here, much of it now resides in the UK..... It got so bad that there are muscle car "builders" (I use the term loosely) here that import their donor shells from the US - Florida of all places Barry
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