Although I do not have exact EU bumper regulations (and I certainly will
not waste any time searching for them), the bumper question is somewhat
irrelevant because there is still no such thing as "Europe" as whole
(Poland is only an associate member of the EU and has its own rules
which are most likely the same as EU's though) and of course there are
national standards -- I would think they quite different say among old
EC countries, Kingdom of Sweden (now also EU member) and, for example,
Albania (where Peugeots ARE NOT made).
US Customs's official site declares that it is likely that ANY modern
vehicle will meet the US bumper safety standards. The problem is proving
it!
It is clear that the purpose of it was to establish as many barriers to
any individual car importer or a small scale commercial importer as
possible -- to protect the Big Three's "produce" and later large scale
importers. All the regulations are appeared in or after 1974 oil crisis
(when US automakers got really paranoid) and can be summarized with the
"opening statement" of US Customs rules: " Both the Department of
Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency advise that
although a nonconforming car may be conditionally admitted (on a bond to
the authorized "rebuilding facility" ES) , the modifications required to
bring it into compliance may be so extensive and costly that it may be
impractical and even impossible to achieve such compliance. " -- no
matter what are you bringing, it could as well be an electric vehicle
with zero emissions covered with tank armor.
The European safety rules that effectively bar unmodified US vehicles
from entering the EC/EU market are very simple and those cars (US made)
can be brought into European safety compliance at high but not
astronomical cost. An example would be the rear lights. No US
manufactured vehicle with one set of rear red lights can be exported to
the EC/EU (or they associated members, like the Republic of Estonia),
which are of course an obvious safety hazard in any real traffic at
night. The rear lights have to be changed to the European safe ones
(yellow, orange and red, so you can distinguish when the car is
stopping, slowing down in front of you or just has lights on). In
Northern countries, they also have a regulation for fog lights to turn
on when the driver turns his/her ignition key in the new cars. A car
can be sold in the United States and conform to all European standards.
Your Merkur (German Ford-made Ford Scorpio, what happened to
Scorpios/Merkurs in the United States. How did they perish?) likely
conformed to all standards. In the US car is principally considered to
be incompliant although it be fully compliant (!) technologically.
There is no personal exemption for importing a new car. None. I think
that another proof that whole maze was designed to prevent individual
people from buying NEW cars elsewhere and not from the Big Three or
later also the Toyota/Mazda/Honda, etc., Inc. in the United States and
that environmental issues were the least of concerns is that you can
bring with you or import any vehicle made before 1969 or any diesel
vehicle made before 1973 -- no matter how filthy and how polluting the
thing could be. Although now these cars (made before 1969 or 1973) are
or are almost antique cars, at the time when they designed the set of
rules and regulations to prevent you from bringing-in a car (the time of
the oil crisis, 1974 onwards), those cars were almost new.
In any case, let's do something about bringing back the Peugeot!
Eugene Soukharnikov
Providence, RI