This is what the Nissan Skyline guy thought. While you are correct up to this point, what you and he missed is that your “assemblage of parts” cannot ever be a motor vehicle. It is definitely against the letter of the law.
This is what the letter you get from the DOJ looks like:
Sure, but hopefully you understand that when they say “for display or racing or off-road use”, that is literally what they mean. If you show up at the border with a detailed itinerary of what racing series your VW will be competing in, your documentation from the FIA or applicable motor sport sanctioning body, logbook for the car, support trailer, with the car fully stripped and caged, and are otherwise actually going to be racing, then yeah, you’ll probably be OK. Or if you represent a big car company like Volvo with all the documents and requirements Rick referrs to, you’ll be OK.
It’s a little more involved than just promising the customs agent that you won’t drive it on the road. If you have to even ask then you probably aren’t eligible.
The difference is that Skyline guy was actually assembling new cars, whereas what I’m describing is just massively updating an old car. Assuming it is legal to import parts for non-us spec vehicles (which it appears to be, although the NHTSA site does not make that clear), it would be no different than building a highly customized classic car with domestically-procured aftermarket parts.
The fact that he was attempting to assemble a kit car is not the issue. Assembling kit cars is not against the law. There are companies like Noble that do this - import a car body from another country and then assemble it in the US as a kit car. The difference between them and you/the Skyline guy is that their car bodies were never cars and thus are legitimately car parts. Your car is a car and to turn it into car parts you would need to do something drastic enough to convince Customs that it will never be a car again, like cut it in half.
What you do with the VW after it comes into the country is neither here nor there. You are still substantially going to be importing a motor vehicle and driving it in the US, which isn’t allowed.
Except that presumably in Skyline guy’s case, assuming he didn’t smuggle them in, the Skylines with no drivetrain were auto parts as far as customs was concerned. He evidently got them into the country with no problem, he only ran into troubles after they were reassembled into working cars.
No, you’re importing a bunch of auto parts and putting them on a car which is allowed in the US and only has to meet the regulations of its year of manufacture. Obviously there is some sort of limit to this (you probably couldn’t just put the valve stems from a Z-car on a Skyline and call it a Datsun for instance), but where you make the distinction between putting new parts on an old car and making a new car is definitely a gray area.
For what it’s worth, the prevailing wisdom among the VW community that just driving up and registering a Mexi-Beetle leaves you at risk of having it seized by the feds (which does happen from time to time), whereas putting a Mexi-Beetle on an old VW pan is perfectly legal and I have never heard of one of these being seized.