The LoLee Planet

It always strikes me how I love to complain! When life is good and all that, there’s nothing to blog about….

Jason and I moved to the country close to Kingston (yes Kingston is NOT considered country) on January 4th, 2008, and have been enjoying the dark nights with absolutely no street lights, every square centimeter of the one acre land, and of course, the million dollar view of the lake. Life is so calm and peaceful that even Lai-fu is learning to appreciate all these!

After the initial joy ride, we are now in a bit of unlucky stretch. First the furnace broke (in the winter, yes), and Jason and I have been trying to fix it. We are engineers, we can do it! Results? we’ve been having very limited heat from the furnace in the last few days, and it’s completely not working at this moment (though I’d like to believe that I’ve just figured out yet another solution!). Currently we have three space heaters running, and we have at least once gone to bed with hoodies. Luckily it hasn’t been too cold, just lots of snow =p. With the snow storms, it’s been more difficult to drive. Tonight, when I was coming home from dinner at friends’ house, I was being extra careful as the blowing snow condition made it hard to see and slippery to drive. Everything was fine until I got to my 40m drive way… I tried turning into the drive way and the car totally went out of control and slammed into a one of the 1m tall snow banks that were like the gate posts before I was in it! I swear tonight is the night that I swore the most in my entire life….. I tried digging the car out, but no movement after 45min. I called Jason, who’s working overtime, to come home to help. This was about 9pm. By 10:50pm, we finally got the car out… we used sand, old carpet, lots of shoveling and snow-angeling beside the front wheels (with our feet underneath the car, of course)… This is the one day that I really wish I had a rear wheel drive. or even an AWD! After all the hard work, we did get warmer so that we can sleep well tonight, maybe without the hoodies!
I wish i had some pictures to share but i really wasn’t in the mood to take any. For consolation, here’s a picture of Jason using the snowblower we have (we also have a ride-on lawn mower and a chain saw, beware!).

Finally, Happy Chinese New Year!

Now we have brought the 2007 Prius back to Ontario in one piece and have managed to get modifications (really just day time running light, which Jason did it himself) and inspections done, what did we end up spending/saving?! From what I’ve been reading, the price you pay for a Canadian Prius is pretty much what you price on the internet, so I’m going to use it as a comparison base. Just a few other notes:

1. All costs listed are in Canadian dollars except where noted
2. All the numbers you see were paid from our wallets. The exchange rate fluctuates so some of the costs, i.e. PST and GST may not corresponds to exactly 8% and 6%
3. This calculation assumes that a new Prius never registered in the US can get Canadian Federal rebate. There is controversy to this but since the program is not finalized, I’ll assume we can get it for the sake of this comparison
4. GST, PST, and Freight fee are back-calculated from Toyota’s website, which states a lump sum of $5062.00 on taxes, levies, fees, freight & delivery

The bottom line is we save more than $10K (which is similar to fellow Canadians who have managed to import a Prius from the US)! In addition, our experience has been very pleasant. Our dealer was extremely nice and helpful (unfortunately a few days after we picked up the Prius, he told me his dealership got a phone call from Toyota USA and is no longer able to process cross border transactions, =_( ), the car so far is awesome, and crossing the border and going through the customs were smooth and painless.

I highly recommend taking this route to bring in a Prius given that you can find a dealer who is willing to sell to Canadians. Our approach was to be straightforward to the dealers in the US about your Canadian status so no one has to waste time. Most of them will likely tell you that it’s against their franchise agreement, but if you keep trying you could find someone who will sell to you. I personally do not know what the franchise agreement states, let us know if you have seen it!

One of the drawbacks of importing an American car into Canada is the need to make modifications to meet the Canadian safety standards. In order to bring the USA Toyota Prius up to Canada spec I had to install daytime running lights. Luckily, There are many instructions found throughout the internet to aid in my quest to install the daytime running lights (drl). I ended up using a kit that utilizes the turn signal lights as the drl. The turn signals still flicker on/off when turning and are switched off when the main headlamps turned on. The kit cost $50, and I spent 3 hours of my time to install. This could have been quicker, but I wanted to make sure i had the right wires before cutting into anything. Here is the end result (without the wires tied up)

An import Toyota Prius; From the USA to Canada.

The process overall, was fairly simple but i’ll write more about importing the Toyota Prius and saving a boat load of money. Here are some photos to wet your appetite in the mean time.