At the current costs of Starions direct from Japan, the option for one from the US is very appealing, and yes there may be the headache of the RHD conversion but in my very honest opinion, this headache along with compliance
would not come close to the headache involved in fitting widebody panels, especially the rears and then changing over the complete suspension set-up to the US gear not to forget the no-leather interior or the later model interior design..........and the fact that technically, the extra track width and suspension modifications makes the car Un-roadworthy requiring an Engineer's over-sight Certificate which is generally a min of $600 ranging to $2K depending on their mood........another unforseen cost :roll:
A lot of the people commenting here should really do all the sums before and think in terms of the bigger picture, just to make sure you all get the idea, okay just for rear quarter panels, to be cut out completely and have the widebody ones fitted, rather than cut the excess bulge from the US rear panel and just weld it onto the Starion rear I would expect at mates rates, to pay $1500 with them expecting you to give them a hand at it, this would probably be cut down to $600 by taking the obvious shortcut but not a cheap excersice nevertheless.
Then from my current experience with Insurance companies, you could name the value of you car if it was a rare Import, where as with the Starion, no number of modifications is going to raise the value to as much as a genuine Widebody which means a JD Starion car can be economically written-off for about $2500 tops worth of damage rather than $8000 for the alternative, and believe me, I would rather receive a cheque for $7000 than $1500 ($1000 value for Starion wreck) to keep the Starion and fix it myself
