Certification; Importation of Vehicles and Equipment Subject to Federal Safety, Bumper, and Theft Prevention Standards; Registered Importers of Vehicles Not Originally Manufactured To Conform to the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards

This document amends NHTSA's regulations pertaining to registered importers ("RIs") of motor vehicles not originally manufactured to comply with all applicable Federal motor vehicle safety. The agency is amending RI application and renewal requirements to enable the agency to deny applications for registration from entities that have been convicted of a crime related to the importation, purchase, or sale of a motor vehicle or motor vehicle equipment and to revoke existing registrations held by such entities. Another amendment will require an RI to certify that it destroyed or exported nonconforming motor vehicle equipment removed from a vehicle during conformance modifications. The agency is also establishing new requirements for motor vehicles imported under import eligibility petitions, adopting a clearer definition of the term "model year" for import eligibility purposes, and requiring that import eligibility petitions include the type classification and gross vehicle weight rating ("GVWR") of the subject vehicle. This notice also adopts several amendments to the RI regulations that add citations to provisions that can be used as a basis for the non-automatic suspension of an RI registration, deletes redundant text from another provision, and revises several sections to include the agency's current mailing address.