For the past several years, fans of cute little cars imported from Japan have been under threat. States across the nation have decided to ban their legally imported cars, effectively turning them into paperweights. Now, the wave of car bans has hit home as my state of Illinois is revoking the license plates of cars it previously registered. I live here and I’m not going to let the state do this without a fight. Here’s how I plan to save the imported cars in Illinois.
This news comes to us from David McChristian, the founder of Lone Star Kei. David led the charge that resulted in Texas being the first state to overturn an imported car ban since the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators recommended a nationwide Kei ban in 2021. Since then, David has been helping enthusiasts across America keep their Keis legal.
A few days ago, David sent me a message that has haunted me ever since. In it, he warned me that my home state of Illinois has seemingly decided to crack down on the registration of JDM vehicles. I’ve since confirmed that, unfortunately, this is very real and my home state has decided to join the ban-wagon. Illinois is also clamping down on Keis and others harder than some other states. JDM owners aren’t just having their license plates revoked, but their titles are also being branded as “Not Eligible For Registration,” which could cause more nightmares for those wanting to sell their cars.
I have not received a letter from Illinois yet, but there are now at least a few recorded instances of the state revoking registration over the past week. Understandably, enthusiasts in Illinois are concerned. I am, too. I currently own a 1989 Suzuki Every van and a 1991 Honda Beat. Plus, I have a 1997 Honda Life sitting at a Japanese port and ready to get onto a boat for America. I would love to be able to keep driving these vehicles with Illinois license plates.
However, it appears that my state has other ideas, and the terrifying thing is that the state had effectively “shadow-banned” JDM cars some time ago, and few people noticed until now.
Illinois Revokes JDM Registrations
Let’s start by discussing the legality of mini-trucks and Kei trucks as they were until recently.
A Kei truck like the one above is a small truck within Japan’s smallest class of road-legal vehicle, the kei-jidōsha. Japan imposes strict limits on the size and performance of Keis. A modern Kei will often have a top speed of about 83 mph, while vintage Kei vehicles may not even be able to surpass 70 mph. However, these were designed as road vehicles, just tiny ones.
The “mini-truck,” as American authorities identify them, is different. A mini-truck may have the body of a Kei vehicle, but it is modified. A mini-truck is limited to speeds no faster than 25 mph and is imported specifically for off-road use. Mini-trucks like the one below are popular on farms and are used as off-road toys.
Back in the 2000s, Americans began importing enough mini-trucks that states didn’t really know how to handle them. Many states reacted by passing laws or policies to ban these mini-trucks from the road. Illinois was one of them. On December 31, 2009, then Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White issued a memo:
Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White is reminding owners of low speed vehicles that a new law effective January 1, 2010 will require such vehicles, if they are to be driven on the road, to be titled and registered with the Secretary of State’s office.
Uniquely designed low speed vehicle license plates will contain the suffix LS on the plates. The cost to title a low speed vehicle is $30.00. The registration cost is $19. Public Act 96-653 permits low speed vehicles to be driven on roads with posted speed limits of 30 miles per hour or less. Prior to this law, municipalities were required to enact a local ordinance allowing such low speed vehicles to travel on their local roads. The new law does allow municipalities to enact a local ordinance prohibiting low speed vehicles on their roads.
In order to be considered road worthy, low-speed vehicles must be certified by the U.S. Department of Transportation. USDOT defines a low speed vehicle as: “Any 4-wheeled motor vehicle or a self-propelled gasoline powered 4-wheeled motor vehicle with an engine displacement under 1200cc which is capable of more than 20 miles per hour but not more than 25 miles per hour and which conforms to federal regulations under title 49 Code of Federal Regulations part 571.500.”
While this law did legalize the use of a low-speed vehicle on some streets in Illinois, it had the impact of banning 25 mph speed-limited mini-trucks. Under federal law, a mini-truck that is younger than 25 years old can be imported for off-road use only. When done so, the mini-truck doesn’t need to comply with federal safety regulations. The “catch-22” here is that if you have a mini-truck that doesn’t have any DOT-compliant equipment, then it cannot be classified as a low-speed vehicle in Illinois.
However, there has long been a solution to this. If you import a Kei truck that’s over 25 years old, then you don’t have to worry about complying with federal regulations. But, even better, a Kei truck is not limited in speed, rides on regular street tires, and can be used just like a normal car, provided you’re okay with getting to places slowly.
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:
In the letter, the state fully acknowledges that an imported vehicle that’s over 25 years old is legal to import into the country without restriction. However, the state follows it up by saying it controls whether you can drive your imported vehicle on a public road. Unfortunately, this is true. Federal law only determines that the vehicle can be legally in the country, not where you can drive it.
Surprisingly, the subject vehicle in that letter is not a Kei vehicle, but a 1998 Toyota Crown. Illinois appears to be targeting Keis, but other cars are getting caught up in this.
At any rate, Illinois has deemed JDM vehicles unworthy of driving on public roads of any kind, so it’s sending out these letters. But worse than that, Illinois is also sending out corrected titles with off-road-only brands on them and then commanding the owners of those vehicles to surrender their license plates.
Several Illinois Kei owners are just like me, and they live either in a city or in the suburbs. We live hours away from any off-road park. By doing this, Illinois is just giving us pretty paperweights. The title brand could also complicate selling our vehicles to people living in more Kei-friendly states.
No Official Statements
All of this is enough to bring a person to tears, but there’s still more bad news. Many of the states that have banned Keis thus far have published some sort of official statement or something along those lines. Illinois has not. If you crawl through the Illinois Secretary of State website (our equivalent of the DMV) you will find no mention of mini-trucks or Kei trucks, yet the state clearly doesn’t approve of these vehicles.
Likewise, you will not find any mention of mini-trucks or Keis in the Illinois Compiled Statutes. After hours of digging, the best I’ve been able to come up with is 625 ILCS 5/3-401(c-1)(1), which states:
(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.
If you go through the Illinois Vehicle Code (you can click here if you want to read it), you’ll note that Illinois says that the equipment installed in a road-going vehicle has to comply with Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. States have argued that since Kei vehicles were not originally designed to comply with FMVSS, they were not manufactured for operation on public highways.
However, as I said before, Illinois has not given anyone any firm interpretation. Instead, enthusiasts may find that they successfully register their cars and then, some indeterminate amount of time later, the state sends them a branded title and demands the surrender of license plates.
I have reached out to the Illinois Secretary of State for any sort of statement. At first, I was put on hold, and then I was told I would get a call back. As of publishing, this has not happened. I reached out a second time, and as of publishing, my contact has not been returned.
Why This Is Happening
Now it’s time for my least favorite part about these articles. These bans did not come out of nowhere. Instead, they were the recommendation of the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, or AAMVA. If you’ve read my previous coverage, please skip ahead. If you’re new here, click here to read my previous stories. Otherwise, here’s a short version:
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.
Maine’s Director of Vehicle Services co-authored the 2021 guidance that has led to bans that have spread across the nation. In the time since summer 2021, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Massachusetts, Texas, and Michigan have each imposed their own restrictions on imported vehicles. Colorado has also banned Keis, but is doing so quietly, sort of how Illinois is doing right now.
Most of these states have made DMV policy changes that reinterpreted existing laws, and these policies can be implemented quickly. Confusingly, most of these states have targeted only Kei cars from Japan. Technically, you can buy a Suzuki Jimny from Europe, and most of these states wouldn’t care. But the same vehicle from Japan would be a problem.
Even more confusing is that enforcement of these bans has been shoddy at best. In 2021, Rhode Island and Maine banned a bunch of cars, then, as some readers have pointed out to me, both states have sort of just forgotten about their bans. Rhode Island suddenly reignited its Kei ban enforcement last year, while I’ve been told that you can still find all sorts of imports driving around Maine.
This is infuriating because it means registering your import in any of these states is a dice roll. Either it’ll go through just fine, or you’ll find yourself with a cool car that can’t be driven on a road.
It’s Time To Fight Back
Sadly, all of this means that enthusiasts are sort of just out of luck right now. As it currently stands, I likely cannot register my 1997 Honda Life in Illinois when it arrives. Some enthusiasts have gotten around bans by registering their vehicles in friendlier states, but this is not a good long-term solution.
Several enthusiasts have already reached out to me. One of them is Robert, who says he submitted a request for a formal hearing regarding the legality of Keis. He hopes to walk into the hearing and to be able to educate the state on why Keis should be legal and to illustrate how many people the state would be hurting if it continues to revoke registrations.
Other Illinois Kei owners, including myself, have even bigger plans. Through all of these struggles, enthusiasts have learned that their states don’t really know the difference between a mini-truck and a Kei truck, though the AAMVA’s handbooks and recommendations certainly have not helped.
The folks of Lone Star Kei have proven that grassroots organizing can work. The enthusiast-run organization contacted at least 180 Texas state representatives and officials and educated them on what Kei vehicles are and why they should be legal. I’m thinking that all of us here in Illinois should do the same. I will be collaborating with our Texas friends on the next steps here, but it looks like I’m going to be spending the indefinite future trying to cozy up to any politician I can, even if I did not vote for them.
Some may wonder why I am not choosing to sue the state. After all, I am married to an attorney with lots of experience suing the state. Since Illinois was very late to the ban cars party, we have some idea of what does and doesn’t work. Enthusiasts in Georgia went in kicking down doors with a lawsuit, and the state has thus far not shown them any mercy. Yet, enthusiasts in North Carolina, Texas, and Massachusetts were able to get bans reversed without lawsuits. Enthusiasts in Michigan did file a suit, but it was a companion to the same kind of educational work inspired by the Texas effort.
So, for now, I want a lawsuit to be closer to our last resort rather than the default option. States do not like being sued, and you cannot predict how the state would react to litigation. Some states may just dig in their heels and force you into a courtroom war. If you’re as unlucky as the enthusiasts in Georgia, you end up burning through cash, and you still get stuck.
If you’re in Illinois and want to help your fellow enthusiasts win this fight, join the Illinois Kei TRUCK/VAN/CAR Facebook group, where we will be discussing our plans. I may also be starting a nonprofit organization called Prairie State Kei. But for now, it seems all of us are just trying to get a plan together. Either way, all of us are determined not to let Illinois just ban our vehicles, at least not without a huge fight.
Hell yeah, Mercedes. Keep fighting the good fight!
I see an adorable little Kei trucklet with NY plates fairly regularly here in western NY. Yes, please, let the Keis drive!
I’m not 100% sure where we stand now in NY. I know they aren’t allowing new registrations of Kei trucks. I don’t know how far they’ve gone with revoking registrations on one that were already on the road. I started to see more and more around (people using them to advertise their farm stands and those types of things are a fun things to see) but now it’s just Marketplace ads for people trying to offload them.
So the state sends a new branded title, but doesn’t take the original title back. Well at the least you can sell it out of state with the old title.
Without getting into politics too far, winning this battle in a state with the leanings that yours has is unlikely.
I haven’t found much of a partisan component. Texas is very red, yet did a ban that got reversed. Massachusetts is quite blue and did a ban that was also successfully reversed. Michigan was red on this cycle, but gave up on its ban. The states still enforcing bans are a mix of red and blue.
The only real constant is the language being used to justify the bans. I will likely end up finding out who is supporting the ban here in Illinois. In Colorado it’s the state police and car dealers, which is wild.
Why do Colorado police have such a beef against Keis?
I strongly suspect they don’t, but the people slipping them envelopes full of greenbacks under the table do.
In that case the strategy should be to sue and make them defend their stance in court. If it’s simple bribery and there is no valid argument they’ll probably drop the objection real fast.
Has anyone heard of similar initiatives going on in Canada? I haven’t, and with only a 15-year import rule, it’s even easier to import them! Generally I view Canada as slightly more authoritarian than the US, but maybe import cars is one of the nice exceptions!
American authoritarianism has much better propaganda to bullshit the huddled masses.
Apparently, some provinces get pissy about RHD cars, but that’s basically it
“slightly more authoritarian”
I, uh, don’t even know where to start with that.
Alternative Take #1 – Don’t worry about getting registered, just drive around with no plates (and insurance) as an increasing number of drivers are already doing.
Alternative Take #2 – Go the hot rod route, drop a bigger engine in one, and use one of the other exceptions:
“(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.”
Every time I see a picture of a Kei car with a “Come and take it!” sticker, I picture two burly gentlemen approaching the car, picking it up and carrying it away.
Mario and Luigi, one would hope.
While the fight has to be head on and a complete victory – what about attacking at the flank ?
Can’t they be imported as cars, then “rebuilt” as kit cars, hotrods, historical, home made, anything ?
Unfortunately, that would not work in my state. You have to provide paperwork about where the donor parts came from and then have your custom vehicle inspected. The state won’t be happy to see a bone stock Honda Beat pretending to be something else.
I don’t think that works anywhere, though there are some states that seem to allow registration of just about anything, so maybe there are a few places. However, imported cars are fairly obviously manufactured cars and they have VINs. Generally, a homebuilt will get a VIN assigned by the state after passing an inspection and a component car will have a certificate or origin from the manufacturer that passes for a title. For either, you need to show receipts for parts. If it were possible, that loophole could be exploited for imported cars under 25 years, as long as you can manage to physically get it past the border.
Fair enough, but most imported cars under 25 years wouldn’t be ones that one would be comfortable cutting and re-welding.
I don’t see a Beat as a suitable candidate for registration experimentation, but a Kei truck transformed into a van, or vice-versa ? Some registration type as specialized vehicle ?
Some non-profit or similar LLC that would say convert sedans into wagons, or do any work that would be both doable and changing enough to pass for a custom vehicle ?
Back in Europe one could see plenty of Polish trailers on the German autobahns, before Poland got into the EU. They had some very hefty tarifs on used car imports, so what you’d see on the trailer would be – a car, with its powertrain taken off and secured to the same trailer, a foot ahead of the car. They’d do that on mall parkings 🙂 Put a car they’d buy used on the trailer, take the engine and transmission out, get back to Poland.
Anything to declare, Sir ? Sure, this here car chassis, and this here car powertrain. What, coming from the same car ?!? The coincidence, I tell you ! An amazing one with that.
Then they’d reassemble the thing into a car and register it. An insane amount of needless work, but it was worth it.
Sorry for the poorly worded sentence. I only meant that, if it was possible for someone in the States to register a manufactured car by claiming it as a home-built, then they could essentially use the same trick for anything, even something under 25 years old. A drivetrain removal for import and reinstallation wouldn’t work either. You can import a drivetrain and swap it into a US-legal car (whether you can get away with it in a specific state depending on inspection requirements is another thing altogether), but a chassis with a non-US standard VIN will need valid explanation that will pass with the registrar. If you try to claim it as a home-built, the inspecting officer (in MA, it’s the state police) will almost definitely know that’s not what it is and obviously would be denied. I’m not sure what any legal penalty might be for clearly attempting fraud, but I’m sure it wouldn’t go over well either way. Anything the size of a kei class or even a little larger is just too unusual to be passed off as a possible Frankenstein monster of parts (that you would still have to have receipts for). If you wanted to try this with one of these small forward control pick ups, the cab would be an immediate giveaway as a manufactured vehicle, since the only native forward control vehicles are a lot larger. You could probably use a cab from one of those small trucks and put it on a custom chassis and register it as a home-built (I’d be sure to have lots of receipts and pictures of the build), but at that point, that’s really what it is.
How are we going to run a nomadic horde without adorable little rides?
I still don’t quite understand what is in it for dealers, or why they should care? These things are a specific kink. It isn’t like Joe Citizen is cross-shopping a 25 year-old Kei vehicle and anything offered for sale at a dealership.
But it really is that simple. It’s always about money.
That’s a little too simplistic an answer. The 25-year import ban was about money. 25 year-old Kei cars are a niche of a niche, and there is nothing preventing a dealer from getting into the Kei car business.
I’ve seen a Daihatsu kei truck on the used lot of a Toyota dealership in Illinois. I’m assuming it was for sale. You can even see it on Google Street View. https://maps.app.goo.gl/3BJvqTTDfXUDDCTk9
They can be a real threat to UTVs (all them BRPs, Polaris and so on). My understnding is the push comes from there, as well as from farm equipment manufacturers (although there are companies that can import a brand new 4×4 Kei truck to drive on your ranch and little they can do to stop you, so that one might be not the case).
Or, someone is planning on releasing something similar at the price of boy toys and wants to clear the playing field first.
I have a couple Kei car lots in my area, so I see them regularly on their lots on and on the road. I just don’t see them as a real threat to current UTVs.
A Kubota UTV in dump truck version with hydraulic bed and whatnot is the price of a good car. It’s a nice workhorse, but at the end of the day it’s an UTV.
A Kei truck is the same form factor with higher load capacity, heating, AC, weather protection, has all the 4×4 stuff needed (well, maybe not all of them have low gearing), but it’s at least as much of a workhorse if not way better for some applications.
If you check importers – you can buy a very recent one for $20ish grand here, in the US. You won’t be able to register it, but you can use it on your property, ranch, job site, you name it.
I suspect no farm equipment manufacturer would be comfortable with these getting more advertisement that they already have, an my guess is that’s why they want to nip it in the bud.
From the UTV side – while a Kei truck is no direct competitor to say a Kawasaki Terryx, it definitely is to a Kawasaki Mule for example.
The vehicle you describe – a Kei-size utility truck that cannot be registered to drive on the road – has been available new in the U.S. at least since the 80s as the Cushman Type G (IIRC it was a Mitsubish design, but manufactured outside of Japan). They’re are (or at least were) popular on large campuses (universities, military bases, golf courses, etc.), which is why I think these Kei vehicle bans are based on a misunderstanding of (or misinformation about) how those were allowed in the U.S. to begin with.
My understanding is that the organization that started it all and that has been systematically poisoning DMVs is organized, well funded, competent, and definitely represents one lobby or another.
They are too good and determined not to be. Which lobby – I don’t know. I’ve heard – UTV manufacturers one time, farm equipment the next.
It is probably a good idea to figure out who is actually behind these efforts. Too many lazy and reflexive “car dealers” as a response around here.
That’s a fair point, but it may not just be auto dealers.
The power sports industry wants everyone and their grandmother to own some sort of UTV or SxS. It can be assumed they would rather not compete with proper road-going mini trucks, especially ones with a real cab, heater & AC for half the price.
We’re talking very different machines with diverging capabilities, but the use-case for many owners is identical.
I was cross shopping a 25 Nissan Leaf S with a 2024 Polaris Ranger XP Kinetic as in my area I can register UTVs as MPVs and provided I get insurance and don’t drive on the interstate I can drive on public roads like a regular car.
Fully configured with an enclosed cab, Heater, onboard “fast” charger that maxes out at 9KW (full 80 mile charge in 5 hours), it was $48,400.
Brand New 2025 Nissan Leaf S: $21,500 with free delivery, I had a NISMO (actually made by Quaife for NISMO) 2 way Helical Limited Slip Differential installed and all together I have $25,500 into the Leaf total (including the purchase price).
Don’t get me wrong, the Polaris is a lot more capable off road, in deep snow, etc. However it only does 55 MPH, lacks crash safety standards, and has 69 miles less range.
For what I need car wise both the Leaf and the Polaris would work for me, but where I’m at now the winters are just cold with hardly any snow, and insurance probably wouldn’t be any cheaper for the Polaris over the Leaf, so I went with the Leaf and so far I love it! Though if the Leaf ends up being a Lemon, gets totaled, etc. I’ll probably get the Polaris just to change things up and open up more off roading possibilities.
*edit: Updated the price of the Polaris, forgot the mirrors initially.
Sounds like a good idea to try and educate, but I feel like this is less a conspiracy against small imports, and more trying to reduce complexity at the dmv.
Consider the number of kei vehicles actually registered compared to regular cars. There’s over 3.5 million regular vehicles registered there yearly, and general stats say less than 8,000 kei trucks were imported in the whole country last year. Let’s be generous and divide that by 25 instead of 50, that’s about 300 kei trucks maybe imported in Illinois last year, vs 3.5 million cars, that’s not even .01 percent of cars registered. Now consider the added paperwork and processes that has to be in place for said kei vehicles to be titled/registered/insured, so from an efficiency perspective, cutting out .01 percent of cars to not register that could eliminate having to educate staff and have forms and processes available for those cars may seem worth it.
I’m not saying it’s cool, and if I wanted to register a Yugo it’s totally legal so should then much better built kei cars, just saying I get it from a government standpoint.
Maybe another carrot to offer would be to suggest creating a volunteer non-profit organization to channel registrations through for kei cars, if efficiency is actually one of their reasons.
I understand what you’re saying, but it seems to me that the processes and procedures to register these vehicles are already in place. They’ve only recently started banning them and they’ve titled and registered them just fine for years.
This might make sense if the Illinois Secretary of State cared about efficiency. Three of my six Smarts are registered under completely different brand names. One is a “Merz,” one is a “Smart Car,” and one is a “Benz.” The rest have the proper brand name of “Smart.”
DMVs already have to deal with RV conversions, kit cars, rebuilt cars, salvage cars, bonded titles, and tons of other unique title situations that require more paperwork and time.
When you walk into an Illinois DMV, you hand over:
Bill of sale/invoice.
CBP 7501 form.
Export certificate.
English translation of export certificate
Check for taxes.
Application form.
Tax form.
The application and the tax form were the same forms you fill out for any used car. The other forms were provided to you when you imported the car. The processes to register these cars already exists.
If you bought your car from a dealership, you’ll be handing over a regular title, and thus registration is no different than a regular car.
The process takes a little longer, but you walk out of the DMV with license plates. My local office loves Kei cars so much there’s a wall of all of the weird cars they’ve registered.
As far as insurance goes, I can add a JDM car to my policy in only a few minutes through my insurer’s app. No extra paperwork required. This might differ in other states, but in Illinois it has been painless.
Anyway, every single state that has banned cars has claimed to do so in the name of safety, not efficiency. The AAMVA says nothing about efficiency in its recommendations. 🙂
If they are TRULY worried about safety, then they would ban motorcycles, electric bicycles and electric scooters. This is NOT about safety in the least.
Doctors call motorcycle riders “organ donors”, and the new electric scooters and
e-bikes are being ridden like motorcycles, but all too often disregarding laws against riding on the sidewalk, stop signs, traffic lights, and so on, and usually without a brain bucket.
If they were truly worried about safety, HD and dually pick-ups would require a different license, and be registered and taxed as such.
And RVs would require a bus/commercial vehicle training course and endorsement.
My e-scooter kicks ass, just sayin’.
Yeah some government agencies go hard on being jerks, just trying to see a rational explanation other than government official thinking “I’m unhappy with my life choices, how can I make other people unhappy?”
I’m hoping you turn them around!
I’ve said this before – and got either ignored or shouted down – but my guess is that some of this is what is alluded to in the article. Kei-size vehicles have been imported new for years for off-road use only, so on some bureaucratic level the road legality specifically of those had been adjudicated. The 25-year importation thing is just muddying the waters.
That’s where I’m wondering what’s changed recently, non-kei like Jason’s Pao and Skyline GT-Rs have been popular for years, but I guess the kei vehicles haven’t been as big a thing until recently.
Maybe because we could get beater mini-trucks for like $1k until recently?
But how would the availability or unavailability of $1k beater mini-trucks affect dealers?
I mean they’re getting rarer, so dealers were like woo-hoo, they HAVE to buy our $50k work trucks now! And then people start importing kei trucks and they’re like dangit, gotta phone a friend.
Is this a joke ?
How is the extra burden for the DMV ?!?
They register a vehicle. Said vehicle’s data is filled on a form. Do they get tired or triggered if the name on the form is different ?
The burden is on the owner. They have to provide a stack of documents to get the vehicle registered. How hard it was for them to provide said stack is no skin off the DMV’s back.
How much harder is – say – for the passport service to make a passport for someone with a 5-letter long last name vs someone with a 17-letter one ?
Setting aside all of the arguments on this that have been rehashed ad nauseum…
The entire nation is in political disarray. Many of the individual states are as well. And yet THIS is what state legislatures choose to focus on??
It actually makes total sense, governments are great at ignoring real problems and instead making the little guy’s life harder.
Its what they do best.
The old criminal trick of distracting their victims so they can commit their crimes with better odds of success.
We just need to convince them to start importing them from Japan…problem solved!
Land of the free, mate.
A biblically sized dump across most of a continent.
Free to get hosed for all we’re worth. A country solely dedicated to corporate profits.
Typical Illinois… there’s never been a tax or a pointless regulation that the State’s lawmakers didn’t love. I’m glad I left.
As others have said, this clearly has absolutely nothing to do with safety. If it did, then any car built prior to the safety regulations would be considered non-roadworthy. BUT, the boomers would come fully unglued if the state tried banning their shitty old polluting muscle cars, so obviously that’s a non-starter.
Someone is benefiting from this bullshit, and I can’t help but think that car dealers and their lobbyists are the primary suspects. As with anything else in government, just follow the money.
Interesting that Alexi, who plasters his name in a large font in every other official SoS document, doesn’t put it on the “we canceled your plates” letter.
If you follow politics, it’s pretty obvious that Gov Pritzker is running for the Democratic Presidential nomination for 2028. So it’s vital that he protect Illinoisans from the evils of Kei cars.
At the same time he is the one you need to target with information.
It is an interesting time in US politics.
A as a Canadian I have my elbows up and my vacation rearranged.
Elbow away, bud. It’s not going to make a difference. Plus…
No one likes a shitty tipper, and you Canucks….lol. You all are probably the global leader in that. I mean, the Germans are certainly on the pitch, but you all are the ’87 Lakers of tipping.
Ha! just watch.
I usually tip 15 to 20% for meals as the service merits.
Minimum wage is 17.75 loonies here, things get scary for service workers I hear. Tips make a difference and a cheap bastard is a cheap bastard, wherever they are from.
The customer already paid you in the bill. If you don’t get paid that’s between you and your boss, leave the customer out of it!!
That’s not how it works in the US, and you know it. Tipped workers make shit hourly money. If you don’t wanna tip, be ready to pay $30 for a shitty bucket of wings.
How it works in the US is tipped employees are guaranteed minimum wage, just like any other minimum wage employee. The difference is in some (not all) states employers are allowed to pay them less when the difference is made up in tips. Those tips go straight into the pocket of the boss, NOT to the employee.
How it works in the US is some of that tip money inevitably finds its way into the coffers of one of the biggest lobbying organizations in Washington, the National Restraint Association that fights tooth and nail against minimum wage increases and supports tipped minimum wage laws:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/17/us/politics/restaurant-workers-wages-lobbying.html
https://restaurant.org/getmedia/c0a0283e-4d32-4b5d-a01f-1ea4051d5885/raise-the-wage-act.pdf
Tips are the only reason the tipped minimum wage exists. Tipping makes the problem WORSE, not better.
The way it works is the food service industry uses every trick in the book to try to convince their customers to double or triple pay for the same thing, in this case the labor. Customers already paid a the price of a case of soda for a single glass, take your damn wage out of that instead!
“…Those tips go straight into the pocket of the boss, NOT to the employee.”
As someone that has side-hustled as a bartender for some 30 years, your statement here is not even remotely true.
There are a lot of things to go through here, that I don’t have the energy to get into, but the bottom line is that the margins on beverages are fantastic. The hours put in by all levels of labor (from the dish dog to the owner) are also enormous to provide that service safely. The margins on food are pretty shit, due to a myriad of reasons.
And, yes, just like in every segment of every industry ever, you aren’t ever going to pay wholesale in a retail environment. That’s not how it works. So, while you may be paying a multiplier on the true cost of a good, it’s not exactly free money for those that collect it.
Have you ever worked in tipped service? That’d be interesting to know…
As someone that has side-hustled as a bartender for some 30 years, your statement here is not even remotely true.
It is is absolutely true:
The Federal Two-Tiered Wage Floor System:
The two-tiered wage floor system was ushered in when Congress amended the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1966. The good news was that service workers previously not covered by the FLSA, thus not covered by minimum wage laws, would be protected under the amended FLSA umbrella. But, the 1966 amendment also established a “tip credit” provision regarding the minimum wage for workers who customarily and regularly received tips — otherwise a large portion of the newly covered workforce.
How does the two-tiered wage system work; and what exactly is the tip credit allowance? At the federal level today, it works as follows:
All workers are legally due at least the federal $7.25 minimum wage.The direct, or cash, subminimum wage employers legally pay tipped workers must be at least $2.13.The difference between the minimum and subminimum cash wage is $5.12.The outstanding $5.12 is referred to as a “tip credit” allowance. It represents wages due to tipped workers that employers do not actually pay. Instead, employers use customer tips as “credit” to offset the remaining $5.12.The tip credit claimed by the employer cannot exceed the amount of tips received by the tipped worker. If it does, the employer must make up the difference.https://cepr.net/publications/customer-tips-are-providing-the-lions-share-of-wages-to-tipped-workers/
In other words tips that offset the employer mandated minimum wage do indeed go straight into the pocket of the employer NOT the employee
There are a lot of things to go through here, that I don’t have the energy to get into
Come back when you do.
The hours put in by all levels of labor (from the dish dog to the owner) are also enormous to provide that service safely.
Weird how grocery store delis can manage to not poison their customers yet not charge restaurant prices nor insist on a 20% server tip.
And, yes, just like in every segment of every industry ever, you aren’t ever going to pay wholesale in a retail environment.
A grocery store is a retail environment too. A sandwich there is about 1/2-1/3th that of a restaurant. So tell me again why the margins on food are so shit.
Have you ever worked in tipped service? That’d be interesting to know…
FWIW I was a graduate student/teaching assistant for nearly 10 years. That combined with the required research paid LESS than minimum wage in a very high cost of living area with no raises, bonuses or overtime pay. Seeking outside gigs was actively discouraged.
Teaching is also a customer forward service job and at no point did I or any of my TA peers even THINK of putting out a tip jar for the students to fill.
So, you haven’t worked in a real service industry job. Roger.
Anyway, that whole tip credit thing is basically only ever used in situations like a high-school kid working at an ice cream place. And even then, only the scumbaggiest of employers pay the absolute base wage. It’s only used in the worst case scenarios, in which case the employee should be finding another job. Decent service jobs aren’t hard to get. Great ones are tough to get, but those jobs are earned through connections and reputation. Decent ones are like candy on Halloween, and anyone that makes less than $20/hr in any industry (and complaining about it) is doing life wrong.
In my case, I get $15/hr base when I do work, and with tips I end up averaging (depending on the time of day/week/year) between $35-$80/hr. Either way, my boss is paying me the $15 (and the rare overtime, but it happens in season), not the abso minimum, which I think is $10 in Florida for tipped workers and rises a buck a year moving forward.
Comparing a restaurant/bar/hospitality venue to a friggin’ grocery store is Plastic Man levels of stretch. I shouldn’t have to explain this to an adult, but grocery stores make money on volume, not margin. A decent one is doing $100-$200k/day in sales. Not only is the deli’s overhead absorbed/shared with all the other departments, the customer is only there for a brief amount of time, in a very small area in relation to the overall footprint of the store. In other words, the exact opposite business model of a restaurant.
That argument is tantamount to comparing who was the better NFL quarterback: Tom Brady or Quentin Tarantino?
It’s not even the same category of business, for fuck’s sake, lol.
As far a being a teacher and calling that a service job? Nah. Reminds me of during Covid when Blackjack dealers were claiming they were essential workers.
Teaching is a profession where you work with a hyper-specific group of people. Service jobs deal with working with the gen pop. A whole different ball of wax, entirely.
As far a being a teacher and calling that a service job? Nah.
So, you haven’t worked in a teaching job. Roger.
MIT OTOH agrees with me:
“Education: Our Most Important Service Sector”
https://sept.mit.edu/sites/default/files/Education-%20Our%20Most%20Important%20Service%20Sector.pdf
Anyway, that whole tip credit thing is basically only ever used in situations like a high-school kid working at an ice cream place.
Weird since the restaurant industry fights so hard (and spends so much) just to keep high-school kids working at an ice cream places.
Comparing a restaurant/bar/hospitality venue to a friggin’ grocery store is Plastic Man levels of stretch. I shouldn’t have to explain this to an adult, but grocery stores make money on volume, not margin
No. You are making money by extorting patrons with guilt.
Why don’t you go try extorting your boss with that guilt instead like everyone else has to do?
That argument is tantamount to comparing who was the better NFL quarterback: Tom Brady or Quentin Tarantino?
I wouldn’t know nor do I care to. I have no interest whatsoever in sportsballs.
Teaching is a profession where you work with a hyper-specific group of people.
By hyper-specific group of people I assume you mean students? Well I have news for you. “Students” can range from kinders to seniors, professionals to knuckle draggers, Men, women, LBGTQ+, special ed, teachers take all and as well in many cases teachers have to deal with their parents too. And it’s constantly changing. Sounds a lot like gen pop+ to me.
My bad, you are a superhero for teaching every grade and every segment of society, every day.
Also, I bartended in Detroit. Canadians are shitty tippers. That’s so well known, it’s basically a knock knock joke.
You don’t seem like a very fun person, but I hope you have a great rest of your day, anyway 🙂
Nope. I don’t teach anymore. I have taught a pretty wide spectrum from kinders, special ed to other teachers and even a few seniors which makes my gen pop wider than you’ve ever served in your bar.
Canadians are shitty tippers. That’s so well known, it’s basically a knock knock joke.
Good. Someone has to push back against this out of control tipping bullshit.
You don’t seem like a very fun person
Oh I’m a very fun person, ask any of my former students.
You taught Special Ed to other teachers? That explains a lot.
(also, I was a passenger train conductor in the Bronx. I’ve seen shit you’ve only heard that someone saw on tv 😉 )
Sorry, that was a poor edit. I’ve worked with special ed students and taught other teachers. Those were two very separate events.
And I’ve never been outside JFK. I’ve ridden BART here in the SFBA which has degraded into its own kind of suckitude but it’s not NY subway bad. BART has plenty of mentally ill homeless on board but AFAIK they don’t end up getting choked to death by their fellow passengers. They just occasionally push old women in front of the trains.
This is detail stuff pretty far below a governors radar.
Someone is lobbying the SOS and DMV officials directly.
via the AAMVA, which as a non-public organization doesn’t have the same transparency requirements as a public one would. Convenient, no?
Illinois has laws on the books that allow low speed vehicles such as side by sides and golf carts some access to public roads.
https://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/documents/062500050K11-1426.2.htm
Educate your state rep on Kei vehicles and draw a relationship to low speed vehicles. If side by sides are safe enough for some roads a Kei vehicle meets a higher standard of safety as it was built for public roads. Further, Kei owners want to pay for plates and insurance – something lacking for side by sides and golf carts.
I can’t help but think somebody once asked if these things should be allowed, the response was “Okay” and somebody took the opportunity to write down “0 Kei”.
There are so few of these things around (relative to motorcycles, bicycles, farm and construction equipment, golf carts – heck, I’ve even seen forklifts tooling down the road) I don’t understand why government officials are wasting their time on this. This is not public service.
I’d really like to know the real reason behind the supposed reason they’re doing this. Public safety can’t be the real root issue here, or they’d also need to ban the golf carts and bikes.
Exactly! I live in central IL on the outskirts of town and you can’t drive there without dodging side by sides,atv, or worse a family of six stuffed onto a golf cart.
Okay but what did Jonathan actually mis-register if this is about kei vehicles? The letter states its about a 1998 Toyota, but Toyota’s first kei class vehicle wasn’t on sale until 2011 – the Pixis Space.
Follow the money ,it always leads to the truth.
Who is benefiting from this?
Auto dealers?
Insurance companies?
Lobbyists?
Dealers… it’s (almost) always fucking dealers…
UTV manufacturers are my theory.
That would make sense based on what Mercedes is saying.
At first I figured insurance companies but now that I think about it more ,maybe they don’t care if they don’t insure them?
Wisconsin allows UTV’s on a lot of county roads so if the insurance companies were worried about liability they would have had their lobbyists pay lawmakers to outlaw UTV’s on roads.
The whole banning them after they allowed them stinks of someone with money hiring lobbyists to influence lawmakers.
In Colorado it was discovered that car dealers and the state police supported the ban. I wouldn’t be surprised if I find out similar here.
The thing I’m scratching my head about is why the car dealers care so much. There aren’t many Keis out there and only enthusiasts are buying them. Heck, car dealers can import their own Keis and sell them. I reckon it’s one of those “follow the money” things.
Here’s the list of donors to Alexi Giannoulias, the IL Secretary of State.
https://illinoissunshine.org/committees/19323/
I downloaded the CSV file with the whole list of his donors. I saw several car dealers on there, as well as “CAR of Illinois,” which is apparently the Illinois Automobile Dealers Association. Giannoulias’ campaigns have received $46,000 in donations from that association since 2008.
I drive past a dealership that is owned by a MAGA guy, based on his social media posts. I thought it was interesting when I saw he had a bunch of Giannoulias (Democrat) signs in front of his dealership. This MAGA guy’s dealerships have donated at least $112,000 to Giannoulias, based on my quick skimming of the spreadsheet. I may have missed a few donations.
I found even more donations to him from the IL Automobile Dealers Association, another $55,000 from 2022-2023. I’m not necessarily saying Giannoulias is in the pocket of the state’s car dealers, but he gets a hell of a lot of money in donations from them. I’m guessing if they tell him to jump, he’ll say “How high?”
Since it is very likely that the anti-Kei sentiment is just bureaucracy, or maybe some type of highway safety coalition working alongside or in State agencies, they should be extremely persuadable by elected officials. You may have found a very narrow use case for the burn-down-the-government-and-salt-the-earth crowd in your state legislature. Emphasis the economic impact on farmers, or get the farm bureau on your side, and change may come swiftly.
Every time I read one of these articles, I hear a certain melody and the words,
“My uncle has a country place
no one knows about….”
If you do go the non-profit route, make sure to post it here: I’m good for a donation just on principle. The principle of freedom to drive the shit you got.
I agree it is easier to be nice until it is time not to be nice. Dillon will tell you when it is time not to be nice. But it is hard to start as Rambo and back down. I suggest going in with a common sense compromise. That being not allowing cars on the road that can’t do the speed limit. I know you want to enjoy your car but driving 25 mph and having a mile of traffic lined up behind you is stopping people from enjoying their vehicle. I do wonder though farm vehicles aren’t road vehicles but are legal on the road. Is it possible to register as farm vehicles and drive on the road? How about Amish buggies? Can you register as a vehicle based on religious grounds. Your honor I am a member of the religious order of Autotopian and I can’t drive 35.
Good luck in your fight!
“ban-wagon,” very good.
David, Catch 22 is a book that was made into a movie that was made into a TV show. (kidding)
It’s a very good book
1: These bans stink of car dealer lobbyist efforts.
2: If safety, ban all motorcycles and any car made before federal safety regulations. And all boats. And bicycles.
That is what I do not get for the safety part of it. Should we not allow my uncles 32 Packard on the road as it does not meet those 1988 safety standards? My dads 57 Bel Air? Also really how many Kei cars are on the road and are they really causing issues? I live one state over and used to live in Illinois hopefully this isn’t pushed here as I would love a Kei car/truck in the future.