Japanese Sport Vehicles Reportedly to Retain Truck Status, Quota-Free

In a victory for Japanese auto makers, the Customs Service has decided that sport-utility vehicles--including the popular Suzuki Samurai and Isuzu Trooper--can continue to be imported as trucks rather than fall under strict quotas for Japanese-made cars, congressional and industry sources said Thursday.

Brea-based Suzuki of America, which has no room under Japanese export quotas to sell passenger cars in the United States, had warned it might be forced to shut down its dealer network and withdraw from the U.S. market if the multipurpose vehicles had been reclassified as cars.

Sources said Commissioner of Customs William von Raab informed Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) of the ruling late Wednesday, although the agency’s official position Thursday was that no decision had been reached on the matter. The Japanese car makers expected to receive formal notification of the decision today.

Dingell, who represents a district adjacent to Detroit, had urged the Customs Service to reassess the sport vehicles’ status. In a series of letters to the agency beginning last summer, he pointed out that the bulk of the 210,000 jeep-like vehicles were being outfitted with rear seats and other amenities upon their arrival in America and sold as passenger vehicles.

Customs officials in Los Angeles made the same observation, urging their superiors in Washington to reclassify Samurais, Troopers and Mitsubishi Monteros, in particular, as cars. Other imports in the sport-utility category include the Toyota 4Runner and Land Cruiser and the Nissan Pathfinder.

The Japanese car makers’ U.S. marketing organizations fought back, enlisting the support of Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) in their campaign to maintain the vehicles’ status as trucks. The U.S. Treasury, they argued, would lose about $200 million per year if the vehicles were reclassified, because as trucks they were charged a 25% import tariff, while as cars they would carry only a 2.5% tariff.

A source at one of the car makers said Thursday that the Customs Service will continue its review of the vehicles’ classification while reaffirming their status as trucks for the present. The agency either will publish new criteria for classification as a truck or create a new tariff classification for sport-utility vehicles, the source said.

If the latter course is chosen, the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry, which establishes the voluntary export quotas, could create a new category of vehicles and assign new quotas to the Japanese manufacturers. Otherwise, MITI could simply allow the vehicles to continue to be exported as trucks without quota constraints, the industry source said.

Ronald J. Rogers, a Suzuki spokesman, said Thursday that the company had not received word of the Customs Service’s decision. But Suzuki remained firm, he said, in its contention that the Samurai--which has become the best-selling sport import on the strength of ads positioning it as an urban fun machine--was a truck.

“It’s built as a truck, shipped as a truck and sold as a truck,” Rogers said.