US: Selling vehicles for export angers car makers, but is it illegal?

Automotive World reveals the increasing problem of parallel imports, bought from US dealers and destined for markets such as China - where local consumers don't want to pay local prices for luxury cars (which, as reported in another posting today, have come under scrutiny from Chinese competition authorities). While the manufacturers like it no more than they did the European parallel trade of the eighties and nineties, and have imposed contractual financial penalties on dealers amounting to millions of dollars, there's nothing clearly unlawful about the trade, which is usually effected through the medium of 'straw buyers'.