If you tried to sign our White House petition (from this story) to overturn the twenty-five-year law governing the importation of non-US market vehicles, this is the message you will see:
“The petition you are trying to access has expired, because it failed to meet the signature threshold…”
The initiative that Petrolicious spearheaded for the past thirty-one days has expired. The twenty-five-year rule is clearly intended to protect automakers rather than create a free marketplace and negatively affects enthusiasts who want to import cars never sold in the US. Sadly, we didn’t make it. In order to get the Executive Branch to consider our request, the petition needed to gather 100,000 signatures in one month. That isn’t to say the regulations would have been overturned, or even modified, but now it surely won’t even receive a response.
So, for the moment, you may wipe away your drool and cancel your plans for importing the forbidden car of your dreams until it turns twenty-five years old. If you didn’t sign, you have no one to blame but yourself. We failed.
We did however get 60,401 signatures before the petition closed and that effort is to be applauded. This petition did far and away multiples better than any previous petition to overturn the absurd, protectionist law. So thank you readers, and also Jalopnik, Autoweek, Fast Lane Daily, Etc., Etc., for helping to spread the word.
It was an amazing effort, but one that ran out of gas a bit too soon. We enjoyed all your comments, debate on this issue, and we’ll surely support the next effort to overturn this unjust law wherever it may spring up.
