nationalizing foreign vehicles ?

I suggest you post your question in the Mexconnect.com forum. It is an ever evolving scenerio and the posters there are up to date on info.

With all due respect, nothing against MexConnect, an excellent resource, but since it appears the laws regarding the importation of vehicles change frequently (I believe there was an important modification quite recently), I strongly recommend going direct to the authoritative source, the federal government's own website. I've watched this conversation over the decades and one thing that has held true is that practically every couple of months something changes regarding the importation of vehicles. So I would take the word of other foreigners posting on a public forum with a grain of salt, which is why I post the Aduanas website, where, if you visit and read it, you'll notice some recent changes in the process are pointed out on the page I linked to.

Since NAFTA we were supposed to have free trade and the "normalized" ability to buy and bring cars both ways across the border, but implementation has deviated greatly from the original promised plan. The tendency in Mexico has been to resist the importation and regularization of vehicles from the USA because of the abuses and political shenanigans by large groups of people trying to import hundreds or thousands at a time for political favors.