The Federal Government has now brought into law new legislation to regulate the importation and provision of road vehicles in Australia.
The Road Vehicle Standards Bill 2018 (RVSA) replaced the Motor Vehicle Standards Act 1989 on the 10 December 2018 enabling the Minister to determine national road vehicle standards for road vehicles and road vehicle components.
FCAI Chief Executive Tony Weber noted that the Bill’s passage is the culmination of many years’ work to develop the new framework.
“We welcome the passage of the Road Vehicle Standards Bill and congratulate both the Government and the Opposition for their bipartisanship on this very important piece of legislation” Mr Weber said.
But the part of the new bill that had the car spotters of Sydney salivating was the Register of Specialist and Enthusiast Vehicles (SEV Register). The RVSA has changed the rules of eligibility for the SEV Register to align with specialist and enthusiast demand.
The SEV Register lists eligible vehicles that are of specialist or enthusiast interest and otherwise not available on the Australian market. With the intention to provide an avenue for consumers to have access to these vehicles in the Australian market through their concessional entry onto the Register of Approved Vehicles (RAV) via the SEV pathway.
There are six eligibility criteria under the SEV Register, but the one of most interest to us is the ‘Rarity Criterion’. Under this criterion a left-hand drive car can be imported if it meets one of three volume thresholds.
If it does this the left-hand drive vehicle will not require conversion to right-hand drive. However the kicker here is, such vehicles will still be subject to State and Territory road registration requirements!
Driven Women Magazine approached the NSW Government for a statement about the Rarity Criterion and the possibility that we may finally see left-drive hypercars like the Ferrari La Ferrari and McLaren P1 on Sydney streets.
But the Transport for NSW Spokesperson told us “there are no plans to change current NSW requirements for the registration of left-hand drive vehicles.”
The current requirement for left-hand drive vehicle registrations in NSW is that only vehicles more than 30 years old and no more than 4.5 tonnes GVM may be registered with left-hand drive.
For motoring enthusiasts this is very sad news indeed, maybe we need to start lobbying our State Members of Parliament to explain the economic benefits to NSW should they allow these beautiful cars to drive on our public roads!
Photographs by Driven Women Magazine.