Every new year brings with it new blessings and curses, as life burns through its eternal cycle and civilization shifts under the accumulate weight of the past and the eternal promise of the future. For car enthusiasts in the United States, however, the calendar’s relentless churn also brings with it an extra bonus: a whole new batch of vehicles than can be imported Stateside for the very first time.
See, as you may know, the United States has something commonly called the “25-Year Import Law,” which basically says that once a car is a quarter-century old, it’s legal to import it to the U.S. even if it wasn’t cleared to be sold here new. It’s this law that’s helped foster the current market for Land Rover Defenders, but it’s also led to many a funky Bring a Trailer listing as enthusiasts haul over Japanese and European oddities.
So with the 2020 calendar still freshly opened, we figured it was a great time to pull together a list of cars from 1995 that you can finally park in your very own driveway here in the 50 states. Check ‘em out below.
MG F
Photo: Steve Glover via Wikipedia
Roadsters were enjoying something of a renaissance in the mid-1990s; perhaps unsurprisingly, MG –a brand known best for, well, roadsters — was keen to capitalize on it. The MG F that debuted in 1995 is hardly a barnstormer by modern standards (the most powerful version made just 147 horsepower), but its light weight meant it could scamper from 0 to 60 mph in seven seconds or less when new, and its unusual Hydragas suspension gave it an impressive ride/handling balance.
