Wheels

[Kirbstone]

Alas, my beloved old Mercwaggon has been diagnosed with terminal rust and it is unlikely to pass its next NCT, or MOT (in English). It still goes very well and is taxed &c to the year's end, but my roving eye lit on an ad. for another of the same ilk which,on inspection, looks like it was minted yesterday!

Metallic sapphire, how about that, and all the (for me) desired bells & whistles....aircon, auto, alloys, sunroof &c. and it was owned by a lady, never raced or rallied, no towbar, no rust at all anywhere! Hard to believe, so I relieved her of it and trust the mileage, 110K miles. I suspect it was garaged for a lot of its previous life, though.

Tom

[dillon]

Send it to the US! If nothing is falling off of it, we'll drive it until it dies.

[crfriend]

Send it to the US! If nothing is falling off of it, we'll drive it until it dies.

Heck, some of us drive cars where stuff does occasionally fall off -- at least I was for a while before giving up last year and buying another car. I finally gave in when the last bit of exhaust-pipe behind the catalytic converter fell off after I got hit by an inattentive driver.

[Kirbstone]

Dillon,

She's a right-hooker and a no-no in the US. When I left Germany I drove my (then) twin-turbo A6 Audi over to Ireland. It was a dinousaur here. It could propel you into (what felt like) low Earth orbit in a twinkling and it was a left-hooker . After 6 months I drove it back to Germany again & flogged it, where it was 'at home'.

I expect it's moist along the East coast and the Demon Rust is the elderly vehicle's Cancer. A close friend lives in CA, however and drives an 80's Merc. with well over 300K miles on the clock. It's dry out there and rust doesn't seem to be a problem.

Tom.

[skirted_in_SF]

I believe right-hand dive cars are legal here. The postal service has a number of small vans to deliver mail to roadside boxes. Heck, the garbage trucks here have controls on both sides and the drivers use the right hand set when collecting.
I've seen a handful of RHD original Minis here, and there is a guy on my Saturday walk route that has an early '50s Bentley that is RHD. I was driving down the freeway decades ago when I thought I saw a car motoring along with no driver. It turned out to be RHD with a driver of modest height. Then again, it may have been Google's original autonomous vehicle. It wasn't that far from where Google is located now.

[r.m.anderson]

skirted_in_SF

You want to see RHD here in the good ole USA take note of the big event coming up:
Just down the coast a bit from your SFO location:
Monterey Calif.
Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. Sun, August 16, 2015.
Link: http://www.pebblebeachconcours.net/pages/3005/

Yes it is legal to drive RHD cars in the USA - individual states may have unique laws
about registration of these cars for everyday use. Current cars imported would have
to have safety and emissions features in compliance with the Federal and State rules.

Only problem I would have would be driving in the gutter instead of the crown of the road.
But then for a continental car driven in the UK it would be no different. You can get used to it !

[dillon]

Right hand drive is legal here. I had a friend who obtained an old RHD Land Rover. It's not especially practical, however, unless you are a postal carrier. We have very little road salt or brine deployed here in the south, which is the traditional destroyer of automotive sheet metal in the US. But I'm thinking MBs may be rust prone. I looked at an older 300D and it was a rust-bucket as well. It took my old Nissan pickup over 20 years to get any significant rust spots.