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Vehicle Registration


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Disclaimer: this is our personal experience in late May and early June this year (2013) and is peppered with our personal observations and opinions. Sorry it's so long (I know how much you like all the little details).

We have a 2002 Dodge Durango registered in British Columbia, Canada. We also temporarily imported a 7x14 dual axle cargo trailer with all our worldly belongings packed inside. We arrived at Lake Chapala January 8th, 2013.
We applied for our permanante residente visas at the Canadian Consulate in December under the new regulations, so had a “temporary/permanente” sticker applied to our Canadian passports that was set to expire June 2013. We received our permanente resident visas April 2nd, followed promptly with a letter from Aduana, our vehicle now must leave the country.

(Spencer is our go-to guy for all our legal proceedings. We have been reading these forums for years and appreciate his expertise and offerings of free advice. He assisted us with the visa application required within 30 days after our arrival, our vehicle returno and whatever else we require expert assistance.)

Our Canadian plated vehicle was automatically deemed “illegal” at that point and we made plans for a run to the border. We planned to “ride” the sticker in our passports if stopped by police in the meanwhile. The need never arose.

There are 2 entirely separate processes; nationalize into Mexico and register for plates in Jalisco.

Spencer applied for our “Se autoriza retorno de vehiculo”; a permit allowing us to drive to the border, on Friday, May 17. It was good for 5 business days. We arrived at the border very early, Monday, May 20th, (what time change?),had our TIP removed and met with Oscar Angulo at 9AM in the parking lot at Klm 21. Previous to leaving home, we had emails back and forth with Oscar sending ahead all our documents; scans of our registration (front and back), our visas, drivers licences, passports and photos of the VIN plate. We did not need a Mexican licence to nationalize.
Our ICBC (Insurance Corp of BC) “Owner’s Certificate of Insurance and Vehicle Licence” acts as “title” in Canada (which Oscar knew and accepted our BC registration). We had ICBC issue a letter before we moved stating “CONFIRMATION OF OWNERSHIP”.

Oscar walked us through the entire process. We waited while our paperwork went through for about 2 hours, acquiring our factura and pedimento. We then passed through to the Customs officials, were issued a number and waited our turn for the issuing of windshield sticker and validating the pedimento with a bar code scanner. This process took longer than usual, according to Oscar, as the computer system was having issues that afternoon.
We were #32 in the parking lot. The vehicles backed up to #55 and more were coming. More bar code scanners arrived. We were one of two norteamericanos in the line-up. All others were Mexicans with and without a broker, nationalizing vehicles in the entire range of condition; from old, POSs to a new BMW M3 on a trailer. The BMW, trailer and tow vehicle were all going through the process.
We were out by 3PM that afternoon. We went into Tucson to sell our trailer (an entirely different story) and were back passing into Mexico through lane 7 at Aduana at 21klm.

We passed through several checkpoints up and back; Army, Federales and state sanitorios (the only guys who wanted to see inside our vehicle-they were looking for fruit in our cooler). The officials at each checkpoint looked at our plates for about a nanosecond on the slowdown and waved us through. One Federale with a big smile said; “Hi Canadians”, followed immediately with “Bye Canadians” and a wave through. We were asked to pull over on the way back by a Federale just west of Guadalajara. We waffled with our lack of Spanish and he promptly waved us on. The checkpoints appeared rather relaxed; certainly not on high alert for anything, least of all a bunch of old white folks driving foreign vehicles.

At this point, back home, we thought we were eligible for Jalisco plates and promptly drove to Chapala to the SVT office. They gave us instructions on the registration for the Jalisco process. We registered online at the Jalisco government website. They gave us the next available date for an appointment with our choice of time. We chose the 7AM slot. They emailed a confirmation stating we must bring that confirmation or we will not be seen.

Documents required; Originals and 2 copies of each: official ID (we took our PR visas and passports), confirmation of residency (TelMex and CFE bills), Title (our ICBC registration and letter of “confirmation of ownership” with an official translation by Spencer), pedimento (we checked the website online before we left home), smog test document (we had the smog test done in Tucson in January on our way down on the advice of the Mexican Consulate).

We appeared at Spencers office to pick up our translated ICBC “Confirmation of ownership” letter ($300 pesos) and asked him about the smog test. He advised (bless his heart) we could save 500-800 pesos having it done at the verification shop in Chapala rather than use our Tucson test. We arrived at the verification shop a couple of doors down from the big, pink courthouse in Chapala and were in and out in 10 minutes and $250 pesos. The nice young man (with the cool dreadlocks) was very efficient.

On our appointed day, June 4th, we were on the road at 5AM. Pulled into the Pemex close to our destination for directions and he said: “right over there”. We were at the SVT inspection station at 6:45AM. Drive through the really bumpy parking lot, past the “reception” area full of chairs on the left, and up to the gate. We showed our appointment sheet. He gave us a slip of paper and said to follow along and park in the first lane of spaces. Wait in your car.
Over the course of a couple of hours, we went through 5 “inspections”, stamps and verifications. They checked the VIN several times, matched the chassis/engine/door panel sticker. At the last one we gave up a copy of all our documents and were given #26. We went to porto #2 for a fairly quick turnaround through the document verification process (with originals) and gave up the other set of copies and our BC plates.
We are very happy we had the letter from ICBC confirming title and our translated letter. We likely could have gotten by with an explanation; however, the letters sped up the title verification more than once. We went to the area by the TV and CAJA (window) #1-3 and waited.

And waited. We couldn’t understand the announcements (yes, we know it’s our own darned fault for not knowing Spanish), however, we kept an eye on the young fellow, #25. There were many professionals (dealership employees?) getting plates with great efficiency. We didn’t understand the flow. We heard at about noon the computer system was down.

We saddled up with a nice lady that translated the announcements about the system. An hour or so later they said all numbers up to 132 would be taken care of that day and all others can come back tomorrow. We were very happy we had an early appointment.
Once they started processing it went very quick. We likely would have been out by 10 if the system was functioning. We plunked down $2,993 pesos and were out by 2PM.

There were some very nice people that helped us along the way. No one was unkind. We felt we paid back lending our plate installation tools in the parking lot.

On the way out we promptly ran a red light in true Mexicano fashion.


Oscar Angulo
email first - ancomercial@hotmail.com
Tel 631-31-52571
Cel Mex 045-6311201015 He is very professional, approachable and a very nice guy.

Spencer McMullen - Legal guy extraordinaire in Chapala.
376-765-7553

Our only advice: don’t get behind us in a line-up – there will surely be problems with the “system”.

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Thanks PoCo. Sorry about the luck with the systems being down both days.

When I went to SVT office on Flavio Romero in Chapala, they seemed completely ignorant about vehicle registration instructions and had nothing to give me. I will just use your list of what to bring.

Arranging a broker ahead of time before driving to the border seems to be the advice from another poster too. Emailing advance copies of all the broker needs I'm sure saves a lot of time, maybe even a day or two.

If I could get in and out of the border process in six hours or less, and in and out of the Jalisco plating process in three or four hours, then this all seems do-able.

Thanks again for the details.

Congratulations.

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