www.CostaRicaTicas.com

To my understanding the age of a vehicle that is already in Costa Rica is no problem just so long as they pass the inspection.. Irrc I have read about the idea being floated to prevent any vehicle older that 6 years from being imported.Any truth to that?

older the vehicle the higher the import tax, as high as 80%, based on who knows what silly valuation they put on it.

So a beater in the US actually worth $1,500 might cost you something silly like $3,000 in import duties.

So you could say they don't encourage the importation of older vehicles, yes.

The tax is on the actual value +shipping insurance+shipping fee! Just for fun i ran a 1992 Lesabre with 131,000 miles and the total cost was almost $4000.00

exactly. I did the numbers a while back and it was obviously a bad idea to try to import an old vehicle.

actually, I have seen several ads on cl for cars that are at aduanas and you only need to pay the taxes and fees and the car is free or only a few hundred bucks more. (Still too expensive)

So, in other words, some guy brought a car in before doing his homework and then when he finds out the ridiculous taxes he abandons the idea and doesn't even want to try to ship the car back home. He loses the car, the shipping fees. Welcome to CR!