How ‘Show or Display’ Helps Collectors Get Their Dream Cars

There are few things worse for U.S.-based auto enthusiasts than finding out that their latest dream car won’t be sold stateside.

Fortunately, there is a way around this, and an officially sanctioned, legal one at that. It’s called “Show or Display,” and it is a regulatory exemption that allows collectors to import vehicles that do not meet federal regulations and safety standards. Assuming the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration deems the car to be of “historical or technological significance,” that is.

The existence of the legislation can be traced back to one car: the Porsche 959. The high-tech model, which debuted in 1986, was the German marque’s attempt to build a street-legal race car. Fewer than 350 examples were built, none of which were officially sold on this side of the Atlantic. One reason was that Porsche, which had already sunk more money into the supercar’s development than originally planned, didn’t want to spend even more money homologating it for U.S. roads, which would have involved supplying examples for crash testing and modifying the vehicle to meet Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.) emission standards.

Despite this, racecar driver-turned-dealer Bruce Canepa was able to bring the 959 into the country on a tourist visa in 1987. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen found out the race car driver-turned-dealer had the vehicle, got in contact, wasn’t put off by the fact that the car could only be in the country temporarily (he’d ship it to the south of France, where it would stay for the rest of his life), and purchased it the next year. Allen also convinced his business partner, Bill Gates, that the 959 was the sports car he was looking for, so Canepa sold one to him in 1989. That car, along with examples Canepa had imported for other collectors, was kept in storage in the Foreign Trade Zones in San Francisco and Oakland since it couldn’t go through customs.

“I had them parked in a Foreign Trade Zone in the Bay Area, rented warehouse space, and that’s where they sat,” Canepa told Robb Report. “We couldn’t drive them. We really couldn’t do anything with them.”

But a car like the 959 is meant to be driven, not sit parked. So, beginning in the late 1980s, Canepa began calling everyone he could in and around the government—“I didn’t let anybody hang up the phone without giving me another direction,” he said— to find out if it was possible to change the regulations in place at that point. Soon after, he was put in contact with attorney Warren Dean, whose D.C. firm specialized in lobbying. After hearing about the situation, which also affected other limited-run exotics like the McLaren F1 and EB110, the lawyer suggested formulating a new law that could be added as a rider on a bill before Congress.

Some of the Most Interesting Show or Display Cars From the Past Quarter Century

It would take a couple more years, but in the spring of 1998, the new supercar law amendment was passed as part of a broader Senate transportation bill, according to an Autoweek article from 2003. The law went into effect the next year, and the year after, in 2000, a procedural document was drafted that outlined a list of provisions under which a non-compliant vehicle less than 25 years old could be imported into the country because its historical or technological significance meant that it was in the public interest for it to be shown or displayed in the U.S.

To be granted the exemption, owners need to submit an application to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), obtain an insurance policy stating that it would be driven less than 2,500 miles annually, and prove that their vehicle meets federal and state emission standards. And if a car doesn’t meet the last criteria straight from the factory, the owner needs to spend money to modify it so that it does. There’s no cost for the process, and applicants usually find out their fate within six months, though that time can vary.

The application, which Alexander Weaver, Broad Arrow Auctions’s Vice President of Private Sales, calls “kind of a term paper,” is a car lover’s chance to convince the NHTSA that they should be able to drive the recent non-U.S.-spec car of their dreams on American public roads. In it, the owner—or, at least, prospective owner since a VIN number is required—provides information about the vehicle in question, where it will be stored, if it will be subject to “on-road use,” and provides documentation illustrating why the vehicle is technologically or historically significant. If more than 500 examples, the applicant must prove the vehicle is of “exceptional” significance.

“You actually can’t apply for show and display until the manufacturing run is actually completed,” Weaver told Robb Report. “For example, everybody wanted to bring [Pagani] Zondas in, but Pagani had not actually issued all of the Zonda chassis numbers until recently.”

The official government list of Show or Display eligible vehicles has grown to include more than 100 models over the last quarter-century. The list includes coveted exotics, like the Mercedes-Benz CLK DTM, along with some unexpected names, like the Toyota Rav4 EV short-wheelbase prototype. An application is still necessary even if a vehicle has already been added to the list or brought into the country by someone else. The only time you don’t need to apply for the exemption is when buying a non-U.S. exotic that is over 25 years old (NHTSA does not require safety compliance after this point).

This 25-year cut-off means that supercars eventually fall off the Show or Display list. You no longer have to apply to NHTSA to bring a 959, F1, or EB110 into the country. Thankfully, brands like Bugatti, Lamborghini, and Porsche are much more likely to sell their vehicles, even their most hardcore variants, in the U.S. than they were back in the 1980s and ‘90s. There are exceptions—like the Zonda, McLaren Speedtail, and Gordon Murray Automotive T.50—but they grow less common by the year.

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Because of that, it’s easy to wonder if the exemption is worth applying for, especially when some patience could save someone a lot of hassle. One need just look at the recent flood of Nissan R33 and R34 Skyline GT-Rs into the U.S. to see that some collectors are willing to wait. Despite this, Howard Swig, the head of auctions at Bring a Trailer, says that Show or Display cars still have a mystique to them. The cars that have been on the list over the last 25 years represent some of the greatest performance vehicles and, in almost every case, are also exceedingly rare. There’s a reason, after all, why several F1 examples are on the list of the 25 most most expensive cars ever sold at auction.

“These cars are rare and special enough that when one does come available, there is that sense of urgency,” Swig said. “If you want it, you probably ought to go for this one, because you don’t know when another one’s coming around.”

Click here to see more photos of some of the best Show or Display cars.